The study of history. This is largely due to how history had shaped my family. My grandfather apprenticed as a gamekeeper as a young man after the First World War where my great grandfather served but never returned. After 1939 my grandfather immigrated to Britain, serving with the British army in North Africa finding his way into the Long Range Desert Group and later the SAS.
After the war he moved to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) where the SAS would again call on him to serve in Malaya in the 1950s. After Malaya he returned to Rhodesia and after my great grandmother's health began to fail he returned to South Africa in the 1960s where he finished as a gamekeeper. He still has a ranch near Kreuger National Park and still remains keen to hunt.
Dad served in the South African Army for thirty years, to include a substantial portion of those years in the South African Recce Regiment (South Africa's answer to the SAS). He and grandfather taught me to appreciate history. As a result of the story of how my great grandfather, answering the Crown's call, left grandfather to grow up fatherless as a lad I journeyed to France and even volunteered a DNA sample to see if remains discovered from World War I to this day in Europe were those of my late ancestor. Just before I left Britain for Afghanistan last year they found the remains of a soldier from the British Army in France. It was my late great grandfather. And Dad and Grandpa were able to repatriate to South Africa my Great Grandfather's remains after nearly a century and finally burying him on my grandfather's land.
History to me seems as alive and relevant today as a result of knowing my family history.