Dr Edward
An 18th-century allegory of the ages of man, represented in a step scheme, with the Divine judgment under the stairs
We tend to assume that the further back we go in our family history the more likely people are to ‘live fast and die young’. With life increasingly precarious, our ancestors will have children younger and, surely, they’ll die younger. So, it may come as a shock, as you delve into your various lines, to discover that it’s not like that at all.