Descendant of kings

I had a great idea in my early days at The Institute, which finished up creating a Dr Kavanagh, PhD, while generating some quite noisy [ie useless] data about Lithium in the groundwater. There are so many Kavanaghs hereabouts [like Powers down the Déise, and Burkes in Galway] that nicknames are given [Butt Kavanaghs; Bonesetter Kavanaghs] which adhere to descendants long after the actual short-arse or healer is dead. I forget the inducement, but, in September, I reserved a bunch of books at the Library by poet, journalist and novelist PJ Kavanagh. The first to arrive was Finding Connections (1990). The conceit is that this Kavanagh was born, lived and worked (1931 - 2015) in England, wore tweed jackets and spoke with a middle-class southern English accent but had a distinctively Irish surname. He goes on a road trip to try making a connexion with his Irish Catholic ancestors starting in Co Carlow and then shipping off after their trail through Tasmania = van Diemen's Land and New…