Television presenter Sue Perkins explored her links to the Isle of Man in BBC Television’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ documentary.

The family history programme featured the actress and writer as she found out the story of her maternal and paternal great grandparents, which led her to visit the island.

Sue went to Peel and Knockaloe due to an ancestor having been a German origin internee.

The Just a Minute presenter discovered that her great grandparents had been Germans who had settled and acquired land in the eastern Baltic states, in Lithuania.

However, her maternal great grandmother had gone to England to work, marrying in London where she and her husband had a successful business until the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 –in which survivors were rescued by the crew of the Wanderer fishing boat from Peel.

The Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat 11 miles off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 passengers and crew.

It led to mob violence against German businesses, with people of German origin or name had their windows smashed or were assaulted.

The comedian’s grandfather was sent to Knockaloe Internment Camp and she spoke about how the Isle of Man would have been an alien environment for him.

Knockaloe Farm was the site of this camp and housed 23,000 prisoners of war and 3,000 guards between 1914 and 1919.

Sue met a German expert at the Knockaloe Visitor Centre to learn about the camp and hear about how Pilates was invented there by its inventor, Joseph Pilates.

The programme continued to follow Sue as she travelled to Lithuania and visited an estate her ancestors owned, including a mansion and stretch of land.

She learnt that her family had returned to Germany during Hitler’s Nazi era but had been subjected to checks to determine their ethnic origins.

When they returned to Lithuania after the war they were then imprisoned with labour by Stalin.

Sue heard that her ancestors had remained German Lutherans in Lithuania and went to see their surviving church – only to find that it now housed a boxing ring.

At the start of the show, Sue had said boxing was the activity that gave her a sense of peace.

She said: ‘The universe couldn’t have planned this better.

‘Everything always comes full circle, but not in such a poetic way as this.’

The episode, which was broadcast on BBC1 last week is on BBC iPlayer and is due to be repeated this week.