Throughout its reign, the British Empire stole a lot of stuff. Today those objects are housed in genteel institutions across the UK and the world. They usually come with polite plaques. This is a series about the not-so-polite history behind those objects. Each episode, award-winning journalist, author and genetic-potluck, Marc Fennell, picks one artefact and takes you on the wild, evocative, sometimes funny, often tragic adventure of how it got to where it is today. These objects will ultimately help us see the Commonwealth — and ourselves — today, in a different light.