The real giveaway from Guernsey is therefore larger than the fragments themselves. History naturally preserves laws, prayers and official records, which can make earlier lives appear more solemn than they really were. Here, scraps of drama and poetry restore something usually lost: curiosity, amusement and the human appetite for stories. Medieval readers may have inhabited a profoundly different world, but they were not necessarily turning to words only because duty required it. Sometimes, it seems, they simply wanted a good story.
