There are talking scholars and writing scholars. Max Hartwell has always been one of the former, despite his long list of books and articles. His cheery presence and staccato interjections are impossible for those around him to ignore. Energetic, direct and encouraging, he was the greatest of supervisors for anyone capable of going away and doing better next time. ‘Get some bloody work done, boy’, he would say, leering over the half-moon spectacles of his Pickwickian phase. Next time he would discourage chat with a donnish dismissal, sorting editorial papers the while, only to revert turn-about to his native breeziness. It was enough to make one believe, with Lindsay, that the product of a life of scholarship is not a book but a man. At any rate, few academics can have worked harder and created more positive externalities for their students. Max had a gift of turning his research students into personal friends. He almost never failed. It is through his students – represented by the contributors to this book – that much of his continuing influence on economic history comes and will go on coming.

The features to notice about Max Hartwell are his bouncing energy and cheerfulness. Visited in hospital the day after a particularly gruesome operation, he was already holding forth to the nurses, who swarmed fascinated around his bed like flies in the outback where he was born.