Writer, local historian, genealogist and Irish GeordieA personal introductionJuly 2024As I'm busily writing a book, I’m not currently seeking family history research commissions or other work. I've subscribed to Linkedin to hopefully make contact and discuss possible future collaborative research and joint publications with historians, local historians and genealogists.My Ancestry.com DNA ethnicity profile currently estimates that I’m 90% Irish, 8% Scottish and 2% Norwegian. I was born and raised in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne, in North East England, and would proudly describe myself as an Irish Geordie.In 1999 I sold my stake in a successful computer services company that I’d founded as a one-man band twenty years earlier in Newcastle. The sale was transacted one sunny August afternoon in a Quayside solicitor's office overlooking the River Tyne. It was genuinely one of the happiest days of my life, enabling me to enjoy early retirement and the pursuit of fascinating new interests and experiences, which have included history, genealogy and writing. The luck of the Irish, perhaps?On St. Patrick's Day, 17th March, 2020 - the day after my Irish-born wife and I sold our house in North East England - we travelled to our holiday home on the west coast of Ireland. Pandemic lockdowns had just begun on the island of Ireland and similar measures were soon to be taken in England.Ireland's tranquil Wild West Way was an ideal place to self-isolate during those tragic times. The lovely Emerald Isle was to become our permanent home and future final resting place. It's a great country for writers and Irish history researchers too.My book is concerned with Irish migration to Tyneside in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Tyneside is today the United Kingdom’s eighth most populous urban conurbation. It's a vibrant area of North East England, a region that was the fourth largest centre of Irish mass migration to England in the nineteenth century. During Ireland’s tragic Great Famine years (1845–52), tens of thousands of Irish people flocked to the North East. They were desperate to find employment and shelter, and relieved to escape death through starvation or disease in Ireland. Sadly, however, many perished through killer diseases like Typhus, in appalling overcrowded nineteenth century Tyneside slums. My fees for services and the proceeds of book sales are donated to charities registered in Ireland and the UK.