Why do historians write (express?) history? Via a personal introduction the author explores the nature of memory and locates Alison Landsberg's book (Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture, Columbia University Press, 2004) within the historian's understanding and engagement with memory, intertextuality, and epistemic choice. Locating Landsberg's book as unique within the exploration of memory by means of a comparison with R. G. Collingwood and contemporary examples of historical expression, inevitably raises questions concerning truth, what it is and where it comes from.