TIMES ONLINE: David Cameron could be a direct descendant of Moses, a Jewish scholar has suggested.
Political commentators have long known that the Conservative Party leader’s paternal great-great-grandfather was a Jewish immigrant who became a successful businessman.
But Yaakov Wise, a research fellow at the University of Manchester Centre for Jewish Studies, has traced the politician’s ancestry back to Elijah Levita, an eminent 16th-century Jewish scholar. Dr Wise’s study of archival material also suggests that Mr Cameron, who has described himself as an “enthusiastic friend of the Jewish people”, could be a direct descendant of Moses.
Mr Cameron’s great-great-grandfather, Emile Levita, arrived in Britain from Germany in the 1850s and rose swiftly in the world of commerce, gaining citizenship in 1871 and becoming director of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, based in London.
Levita married out of the faith and adopted the trappings of an English gentleman, owning a grouse moor in Wales and sending his four sons to Eton. His son Arthur, a stockbroker, married Steffie Cooper, a relative of King George III, and Mr Cameron’s relationship to the monarchy survives to this day — he is a fifth cousin of the Queen, once removed.
Dr Wise has traced the family’s ancestral line back to Elijah Levita, 1469-1549, a central figure in the “Christian Hebraist” movement, who pioneered Hebrew and Yiddish linguistic research at the time of the Tudors. >>> Russell Jenkins | Friday, July 10, 2009
TIMES ONLINE: DAVID CAMERON, the most blue-blooded Tory heir apparent for four decades, is more aristocratic than even he realised. Research published today shows that he is, in fact, related to the Queen through an illegitimate royal child.
Not only that but researchers discovered that his wife is also descended from a royal mistress.
The young pretender to the Tory throne is William IV’s great, great, great, great, great grandson. He is related to the 19th-century monarch through Elizabeth FitzClarence, the King’s illegitimate daughter, one of at least ten children he had out of wedlock with Dorothy Jordan, his long-term mistress.
Samantha Cameron, 31, Mr Cameron’s wife, who is the creative director of an upmarket stationery company, also has royal connections. An analysis of her family tree by Cracroft’s Peerage reveals that Nell Gwyn, the mistress of Charles II, is Mrs Cameron’s great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother.
The family tree by Debrett’s Peerage, the genealogists, shows that the link between Mr Cameron, 39, and William IV makes him the fifth cousin twice-removed of the Queen. If Mr Cameron, who is expected to be declared the Conservative leader tomorrow, is ever asked by the Queen to form a government, he will, as tradition dictates, kiss the hands of the monarch, who is his own kin.
The royal connection has been traced through Mr Cameron’s grandfather, Donald Cameron, who married Enid Levita. Her maternal grandfather was Sir Alfred Cooper, the father of Duff Cooper, who was Sir Winston Churchill’s wartime Minister of Information. >>> Andrew Pierce | Monday, December 05, 2005
