The Invention of Memory

I found a ‘Receipt for a Person in Love’, scrawled in a tattered account book. A terrifying scandal emerged from the bottom of a deed box – exploding to life through the testimony of maidservants, tradesmen, wigmakers, doctors, assorted aristocrats and the victim himself. There were bills for ‘wonderfully fine soles and a monstrous large turbot’, and every necessity of life in a country house in Kilkenny at the beginning of the nineteenth century. And I discovered, to my amazement, that the most improbable stories were rooted in fact.