How they are related: Nick Clegg and Michael Ignatieff

Older readers will remember Michael Ignatieff as an arts broadcaster in Britain in the 1980s - "the thinking woman's crumpet". Today he is leader of the Candadian Liberal Party.

A reader has alerted me to an article from the Globe and Mail which shows that he is also a kinsman of the British Liberal leader Nick Clegg:

Both men descend from Russia’s old Tsarist nobility. Their families fled to the West after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Barred from their former homeland for class and political reasons for nearly a century, they share a history, which includes a branch of their family trees.

Mr. Clegg, 43, has led the Liberal Democrats to a strong showing in opinion polls in the lead-up to Britain’s national vote on May 6 following stellar performances in two party leaders’ debates.

His paternal grandmother, the Russian-born Baroness Kira von Engelhardt, is the first cousin of Alla Vladimirovna Ionova, who married Count Leonid Alexeievitch Ignatiev – the first cousin of Mr. Ignatieff’s father. The children of the two are cousins to both leaders.