'I'd be hugely interested to do a book on New Zealand, but I don't know if I could sell it in the US. 'I am also one of the very few outside the super-sellers who get on the best-seller list on both sides of the Atlantic, and the American market is somewhat different from the Commonwealth one. I have to make a living like anyone else and need to satisfy my transatlantic publishers.' He says of his monumental, stamina-testing but very readable histories, that he is one of the few 'brave or stupid enough' to be in this particular niche. So to the question: will the Kiwi cast of hundreds get its own novel? Rutherfurd makes no promises. 'They'd have known everyone if they had a bach at Orua Bay' - where the Makgills and other kinfolk gather for holidays. His forebear, Captain Sir John Makgill Bt of Waiuku, has 'at least 137 great-great-grandchildren.' The British end of the family with its titled connections 'knew little about the New Zealand cousins until my book,' says Heather Makgill, chronicler of the local clan. 'I have about 50 cousins in Auckland and I've no idea how many altogether in New Zealand,' says Rutherfurd. And his first cousin, author Rutherfurd's 83-year-old mother, bought three. The 13th Viscount of Oxfuird, George Hubbard Makgill, snapped up six copies. He did not know the colonial family tree was such a lusty specimen - not until The Pioneering Baronet, by Heather Makgill, of Waiuku, written for a 200-strong reunion last year, got peer perusal in Britain. Edward Rutherford, who writes best-selling, 1000-page, historical novels, is part of a much bigger story than he imagined. Until recently, best-selling historical novelist Edward Rutherfurd knew little of his own historical connection to this country.

London edward rutherfurd family tree