Andrew Lloyd Webber was born on 22 March 1948 in Kensington, London, the elder son of William Lloyd Webber, a composer and organist, and Jean Hermione Johnstone, a violinist and pianist. His younger brother, Julian Lloyd Webber, is a world-renowned solo cellist. He is best-known as the renowned composer behind smash-hit musicals such as Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. He served as a member of the House of Lords from 1997 to 2017.
At the start of his episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, Andrew says he wants to find showbiz forebears who share his love of “music and art and architecture”. He begins by tracing his mother’s family line, which turns out to be far posher than Andrew ever expected. Much is known about the life of his 4x great uncle, General Sir Peregrine Maitland (1777–1854), a soldier who played a key role during the Duke of Wellington’s defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815.
Tracing back this part of his family line, Andrew discovers his 12x great grandmother is Katherine Willoughby (1519–80), an heiress who as a teenager became the Duchess of Suffolk. Forthright and resilient, she was a powerful figure in the court of Henry VIII – and also something of a joker, who famously named her pet dog Gardiner after a bishop she disliked.
During the reign of Mary Tudor, Katherine and her second husband, Richard Bertie (1516–82), someone she married for love despite his being seen as her social inferior because he was a “gentleman usher”, were forced into exile because of their Protestantism. The couple returned when Elizabeth I took the throne and Andrew, with his enthusiasm for architecture, is delighted to have found an ancestor whose home was Grimsthorpe Castle, one of England’s greatest country houses.
Researching his father’s side of the family, Andrew early on encounters musical relatives. His grandfather, William CH Webber, made his living as a plumber in Battersea, but was a good enough singer to have been part of a choir at George VI’s coronation. Andrew also researches his 2x great grandfather, Henry S Simmonds, a missionary who worked among London’s poorest – “a real working class hero”. Henry also wrote All About Battersea, the first architectural guide to the area.
Further back in his father’s line, Andrew finally discovers the showbiz forbears he’s been longing to locate. His 5x great grandfather, Henry, had the distinctive surname Magito, a Dutch name by way of France. In the Netherlands, Andrew discovers he is descended from an extended family of musicians and entrepreneurial show-people, whose travelling Great Italian Show was the 18th century equivalent of musical theatre. The troupe included a “rope dancer”, Peter Magito, who sometimes performed in skates.
Even more extraordinary is the fact that Henry’s brother was, like Andrew’s sibling, Julian, a renowned cellist. Alexis Magito was a composer and six of his sonatas have survived. At King’s College Library in Cambridge, Dr James Clements shows Andrew a copy of an engraving of Alexis. The cellist is pictured with other musicians, including the violinist Pieter Hellendaal, another whose work is still played and studied.
After sharing the results of his research with Julian, Andrew reflects that he’s proud to be descended from a line of “wonderful, wonderful people”.