Museums are at the heart of the nation''s cultural life, bastions of Britishness in almost every major city and town. Together they detail myriad aspects of our heritage: from lawnmowers to cuckoo clocks, pencils to chairs, there seems to be no end to the subject matter deemed worthy of collection and public display. This overview of museums in Britain traces their development from ''cabinets of curiosity'' to large scale visitor attractions, taking in broad social shifts and trends as well as the collectors, eccentrics and visionaries and the legacies they have left behind.