A BIRMINGHAM-born widow has traced her family tree – and discovered she is a direct descendent of William Shakespeare.

Katherine Albutt, who now lives in Torquay, has spent months combing records to trace the history of her family and made the surprising find when her research took her back to great-grandfather Alfred Shakespeare.

Katherine, who used to live in Erdington and worked for the Birmingham Mail, had it officially verified that he was paternally linked to the Bard. She said: “Alfred’s paternal family tree goes back to Richard Shakespeare in 1515.

“Richard’s son married Mary Arden who was William Shakespeare’s mother, so there is a definite link and this has been confirmed.

“I always thought that there may have been some connection,” she added.

“As soon as I saw the name Shakespeare I had a feeling that there may be some distant connection,” she claimed.

Katherine said she had become hooked on genealogy since discovering her extraordinary literary links. She said she had joined an ancestry tracing website and discovered long-lost relatives in the Black Country.

“I signed up and was contacted by a cousin, called Carol Skidmore, whom I did not know I had. We now talk a lot and both share our passion for tracing our family history,” added Katherine.

“She had already done a lot of groundwork on our family and I am now trying to trace relatives of my grandmother’s sister Ruth in the early 1900s,” she said.

Katherine moved to Torquay in 1987 after spending most of her life in Birmingham. Husband Trevor passed away soon after the couple relocated to Devon.

“I am coming up to see Carol in Oldbury and we will get together to continue our investigations. We have a few family lines that we want to follow and it is getting very interesting,” she said.

“Carol has had it verified that the family is linked to Shakespeare, so that was a great start for the family tree,” Katherine added.