Philip Bates is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.
Ah, Terror of the Zygons. The Fourth Doctor serial which saw him up in the Highlands, battling the Loch Ness Monster and gruesome orange aliens with a penchant for spying on Angus Lennie. It’s quite a beloved storyline.
And then there’s that exchange between the Brigadier and Sarah…
SARAH: Though I didn’t expect to see you in a kilt.
BRIGADIER: My dear Miss Smith, as you remember, my name is Lethbridge-Stewart. The Clan Stewart.
But the Brig has never sounded Scottish. And it’s not ever really brought up again (although why would it be?). It does raise the question of Alistair’s ancestry, particularly as the name ‘Lethbridge’ doesn’t sound remotely Scottish.
Fortunately, Andy Frankham-Allen, author of The Forgotten Son and editor of the Lethbridge-Stewart book range, has cleared it up in an interesting bit of investigative journalism.
He’s discovered that ‘Lethbridge’ is actually a name originating in Devon, and he writes, “to this day, the Lethbridge Baronets are a large and distinguished part of Devon heritage. From this it is clear that at least half of the Brigadier’s ancestry is English, while the other half is, as stated in Terror of the Zygons, Scottish as a once-part of the Clan Stewart.”
Frankham-Allen also takes into account Lance Parkin’s The Dying Days, a 1997 novel, and draws up a brief history of the Brigadier’s family, an extract of which can be found on his blog. But I’ll let you read that for yourself…
Don’t forget, Lethbridge-Stewart: The Forgotten Son (in paperback) is available on Amazon, while Lethbridge-Stewart: The Forgotten Son (Kindle edition)
The post The Lethbridge-Stewart Ancestry: Why The Brigadier Isn’t Actually Scottish appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.