About the author

Peter Christian was born and grew up in London. After a career in academia — first as a linguist and medievalist, then as an IT specialist — he took up writing and lecturing on the use of the Internet in genealogy. In retirement he now devotes his time to writing up his own family history and developing free online resources.

He has been researching his family history for over 40 years and first put his family tree on the web in 1995. From 1996 to 2001 he was editor of the Society of Genealogists’ computer journal Computers in Genealogy, and was also responsible for setting up the Society’s first web site.

For many years he was the Internet columnist for the National Archives’ genealogy magazine Ancestors and is the author of countless articles about online resources for family history. He has also written a number of books on the subject, including Census: The Family Historian’s Guide (with David Annal) and The Genealogist's Internet, now available free on this site.

He is a Fellow of the Society of Genealogists and one of the Trustees of Genuki.

Books

• The Genealogist's Internet (Public Record Office, 2001; 5th edn Bloomsbury 2012)
• Census – The Family Historian's Guide (National Archives, 2008; 2nd edn Bloomsbury 2014), with David Annal
• Finding Genealogy on the Internet 2nd ed. (David Hawgood, 2002).
• Web Publishing for Genealogy, 2nd ed. (UK: David Hawgood, 1999; US: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2000)

• Consultant for Readers' Digest How to Trace Your Family History on the Internet (Reader's Digest, June 2008)
• Internet Consultant for Readers' Digest The Story of Where You Live (Reader's Digest, 2005)
• Computer & Internet Consultant for Readers' Digest Explore Your Family's Past (Reader's Digest, 2000)

Articles

• Regular articles in Ancestors, April 2001 to September 2008
• National press:
  • The 50 best websites, Guardian, 14th April 2007
  • Family History Site Test, Sunday Times, 15th January 2006
  • Genealogy Site Test, Sunday Times, 25th April 2004
• Computers in Genealogy:
  • Genealogical publishing on the World Wide Web, Vol 5 Nos 10/11 (March/June 1996)
  •  Mailing list basics, Vol 6. No. 3 (September 1997)
  •  Can Soundex be improved, Vol 6 No. 5 (March 1998), with additional material in  Soundex Update, Vol 6 No. 6 (June 1998)
  • Genealogy & the Search Engines, Vol 6 No. 12 (December 1999)
  • The Society of Genealogists' Data On-line, Vol 7 No. 2 (June 2000)
  • The NGS' Guidelines for publishing Web pages on the Internet, Vol 7 No. 3 (September 2000)
• Family Tree Magazine:
  •  What surname distribution can't tell us, Vol. 13 No. 8 (June 1997)
• A number of articles in Family History Monthly
• Academic writing:
  •  It's only Minnesang (but I like it): Minnesang, Pop and Rock

Other web sites

• Peter Christian's Genealogy Page
• GENUKI:
  • County pages for Surrey
  • County pages for Sussex
• Literary experiment:
  • The Spoonbill Generator
  • The N+7 Machine