My Romanian father was broken as much by Brexit as by leukaemia

Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} On the night that Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were shot by firing squad in full sight of TV cameras, their bloodied corpses seen around the world as they lay sprawled on the ground behind a courthouse in the town of Targoviste, my grandmother, a Romanian exile living in a cottage in a small village in Kent, lit a candle in her window and prayed for her country’s deliverance. My family’s story was intimately bound up in Romania’s tumultuous 20th-century fortunes, and it’s why even now, 30 years on, the fall of Ceausescu raises so many questions in my heart and in my mind. Suddenly, close up and personal, Romanians were now viewed in a somewhat less favourable light – hence my neighbour’s comment when I was heading off to Romania, again with my sister, earlier this year: “Watch your purse”. But I can always recognise Romanian when it’s spoken, having grown up hearing my grandmother talking to my father – or, as was often the case – shouting noisily down the phone to relatives.