Over the considerable period of preparation of the book I have drawn heavily upon the help of colleagues at Glasgow University. They include Kay Carmichael, Neil Charlesworth, Anne Crowther, David Donnison, Tom Hart, James Kellas, Joseph Melling, Michael Moss, Charles Munn, Forbes Munro, Keith Robbins, Robert Silver, Andrew Skinner and Anthony Slaven. For library support I am especially indebted to Janie Ferguson and Jean Robertson. Conversations with our Chancellor, Sir Alec Cairncross, have been characteristically stimulating. Of non-Glaswegians I wish to thank Roger Davidson, Malcolm Falkus, Peter Payne, Sidney Pollard and Richard Sayers. A visiting fellowship at the Australian National University made it possible to draw upon Kenneth Inglis, Oliver MacDonagh and Barry Smith; at Monash University there was John McCarty and Keith Trace. The typing of successive revisions has been done by Isabel Burnside with assistance from her husband Bill. To this indispensable and much valued service they have added the holding of the home fort during absences. Blythe O'Driscoll as departmental secretary has eased the teaching and administrative side of life. The index has been prepared by Aileen Forbes Ballantyne. Olive Checkland has shared the enterprise from its beginning, by continuous discussion, by criticism that has combined the sobering and the encouraging as occasion demanded and by reading and commenting on the manuscript in its successive forms as it struggled into shape.