It's all about the stories.

We all tell ourselves stories. About who we are, how we got where we are, why we got where we are. Happy or sad, long or short, tedious or riveting, the stories we tell ourselves about the world help to make it understandable. That includes the past - which is, in many ways, another country (1) - and the artefacts that can, with a foundation of information and the furnishings of imagination, provide a tangible link to that strange and foreign land.

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Was the Cordial Balm of Quito really the best medicine in the Universe? Who was Hezekiah Bowling and why, exactly, was he on the run? What did the Somerset Case of 1772 have to do with a court case about quack medicines in London 50 years later? And so on.

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So, here are some stories ... all of them, as far as it's possible to determine, true.

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1) although there are, of course, always alternative views.

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