Ancestor’s Irish famine role could merit compensation, says Laura Trevelyan

Sir Charles Trevelyan was Treasury official during great famine in 19th century when potato crops failed

The former BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan has said her family would consider paying compensation to Ireland because of an ancestor’s role in the Great Famine of the 19th century.

Her great, great, great-grandfather Sir Charles Trevelyan, a senior British government official, was among those who “failed their people” during the humanitarian catastrophe in the 1840s, she said.