Adventurer, broadcaster and Chief Scout Edward ‘Bear’ Grylls was born in London on 7 June 1974. He attended Eton College, and later studied at the University of the West of England and Birkbeck College. He served in the Territorial Army as a trooper with 21 SAS. In 1998, he became one of the youngest people ever to reach the summit of Everest. President Barack Obama was among the famous faces to join Bear out in the wilderness for the TV series Running Wild With Bear Grylls.
At the start of his episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, Bear reveals that his mother, Sally, is “secretly hoping we’re related to royalty”. As for Bear himself, one of life’s mavericks, he’s more interested in finding ancestors who took roads less travelled.
Bear’s journey into the past begins at home, where his wife, Shara, helps him unpack an old trunk belonging to his paternal grandfather, Ted Grylls. It’s full of documents marked “Top Secret”. Bear learns more at Sandhurst Military Academy. Cavalry officer Ted had a fascination with mechanical matters, and became an expert in armoured vehicles and tank warfare. At The Tank Museum, Bear learns that Ted’s expertise contributed to Allied success on D-Day in the Second World War.
As the war came to an end, Ted was one of the commanders of T-Force, a shadowy organisation charged with identifying German scientists, including those who might have been war criminals, so that their expertise could be harvested. This sometimes took Ted and his team into morally murky territory. Having thought of Ted as someone formal and conservative, Bear realises he was a man who in his professional life had an extraordinary ability to lead teams and to think creatively.
Next, Bear turns his attention to his maternal great grandfather, Lionel Ford (1865-1932), a clergyman and teacher who, as headmaster, modernised Harrow School. It was a remarkable career, yet Bear identifies most strongly with his forebear’s warmth and emotional intelligence. Bear is deeply moved when he learns the story of his great uncle Richard, who died of sepsis as a teenager.
Travelling down Lionel’s family line, keen kilt wearer Bear (“Everything feels free…”) is delighted to head north to Scotland, where he learns he is descended from John Stuart, the third earl of Bute (1713-92). Further back still, his 10x great grandfather was clan chief Archibald Campbell, the first marquess of Argyll (1607-61). A leader of the Scottish Covenanter movement, a key Protestant faction in Scotland during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, Archibald was guillotined after the Restoration. A deeply principled man, he left behind a book offering advice to his son. A father of three, Bear is the author of To My Sons: Lessons For The Wild Adventure Called Life. “Mine’s definitely a more lowbrow [book],” he says, “but the intention is the same.”
There’s one last story to discover. Campbell was descended from King Robert the Bruce (1274-1329). Sally’s dreams of a royal ancestor have come true. Bear is especially delighted to find not a “regal, formal” monarch but a warrior king, another unconventional figure who “lived in the mountains” and overcame huge setbacks to secure Scotland’s independence.
Family, faith and a love of the wild have been recurring themes in Bear’s life, themes that also recur in the lives of those who went before him.