h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

According to a Telegraph article "One million British men may be directly descended from the Roman legions which came, saw and conquered England and Wales almost two thousand years ago."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9888402/One-million-Brits-descended-from-Romans.html

Apparently, it was claimed that a genetic study of five thousand people found that up to four million men in England and Wales carry distinctive genetic signatures which are most commonly found, and likely have their origin, in Italy

It should be noted that the newspaper article appeared before the presentation at the "Who do you think you are?" seminar.

The feedback from the presentation itself was rather mixed, as very little detail was presented to substantiate the claim.

An example of the reaction is attached

http://cruwys.blogspot.com/2013/03/who-do-you-think-you-are-live-day-3.html

"Unfortunately the talk was a big disappointment. Alistair Moffat did not use any slides and read his lecture from a script. He started with a brief explanation of the Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA markers which are used in deep ancestry studies....................The conclusion that around one million British men are descended from the lost Roman legions was based purely on the finding of five of the rarer haplogroups in the samples studied........................Unfortunately in the case of this Roman research it appears that it is not to be published in a scientific journal but will instead bypass the usual peer review process and will be published in a new book written by Alistair Moffat and his business partner Dr James Wilson entitled The British: A Genetic Journey which is due out in September. It therefore looks as though we will have to wait for publication of the book to find out more about the sampling process and how these conclusions have been reached."