clipped from www.guardian.co.uk

Barack Obama makes much of his varied heritage. His father was from Kenya, his mother from Kansas. But there is one element of his family history that has remained obscure: his eighth cousin is Dick Cheney.

The revelation that the man promising a new style of politics is related to a vice-president credited with an unprecedented attempt to consolidate the power of old politics was made by Mr Cheney's wife.

Lynne Cheney told an interviewer that she discovered the connection between her husband and the candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination while researching a memoir of growing up in Wyoming, entitled Blue Skies, No Fences, although she did not include this fact in her memoir. She said that the two were both descended from a man who moved to Wyoming from Maryland.

Mr Obama was descended from Mareen Duvall, a French Huguenot. His son married the granddaughter of one Richard Cheney, Susannah, who arrived in Maryland from England in the late 1650s.