George RR Martin's fantasy opus Game of Thrones is famously inspired by a particularly bloody chapter in British history, the War of the Roses. But the hit TV show's producers may not have realised how close to Britain's brutal history their brooding mega-star Kit Harington actually is.

It's been a family curiosity for as long as I can remember Kit Harington

Harington spoke to Front Row about a part of his family's history that helped inspire his latest drama.

"It's been a family curiosity for as long as I can remember".

"Mum used to say 'Robert Catesby was the leader of the gunpowder plot' and not many people know that."

Harington is a direct descendant of Robert Catesby. Catesby was his mother’s maiden name and he even carries the name himself. His given name is Christopher Catesby Harington.

"If you asked someone on the street they'd know the name Guy Fawkes. They know that barrels of gunpowder were put underneath parliament. They know the rhyme ‘remember, remember the 5th November’ but that’s pretty much all they know.”

Born in Warwickshire in 1572, Catesby came from a well-off devout Roman Catholic family and was well educated. He was brought up at a time when England was in religious turmoil. Henry VIII's break away from the Catholic church created terrible tensions and after King James I ascended to the English throne in 1603, it became a criminal act to practice Catholicism.