In his 2010 autobiography Beware of the Dog, England rugby player Brian Moore – who was adopted as a baby – wrote about his Malaysian birth father. But when he attended his birth mother’s funeral in 2020, he met birth relatives and discovered his birth father was actually Chinese.

“Went to my birth mother’s funeral yesterday,” he posted on Twitter. “Strange feeling meeting my brother and sister and a whole set of blood relatives I never knew about. Turns out I’m half Chinese, not Malaysian, and my birth grandfather was a steelworker in Rotherham.” When he was an adult Moore had traced his birth mother, Rina Kirk, who told him his birth father was Malaysian.

Moore, who won 64 international caps playing rugby for England, now works as a solicitor. He was born in Birmingham in 1962 and was adopted by Ralph and Dorothy Moore when he was seven months old.

Ralph and Dorothy had two children of their own and an adopted Chinese daughter; they lived on a council estate in Illingworth near Halifax in West Yorkshire.  The Moores taught Brian about the country they believed he was from –  Malaysia. “I remember having a book about rubber plantations in Malaysia, and I pictured jungle tigers stalking the land.” In his book he added, “I never hide the fact that I am half Malaysian, nor have I ever felt ashamed of it, but nor do I think it very relevant to who I am.”

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