I am very grateful to Alison Howson for commissioning this book. It has given me the chance to develop a general argument about British Liberalism that I have wanted to make for some time. Chapters 1–3 draw on several of my research publications on nineteenth-century Liberalism, but all the chapters also rely on the work of many other scholars, not all of whom there is room to mention in the bibliography. Modern British political history is fortunately still a thriving field of study.

This project has also allowed me to reconnect with the twentiethcentury history of the Liberal Party, which was one of my first historical enthusiasms. When I was growing up, the Liberals were my team. My parents were enticed to join the party by the vivacity of Jo Grimond. Not having been to university, they embraced his emphasis on the importance of working out their own intellectual and moral positions and rejecting stale conventional thinking parroted by a complacent political establishment. Liberal raffles and jumble sales played a large part in my childhood in Dover in the late 1960s and 1970s. Local Liberal social life implanted in me the idea that political activity was really a means through which thoughtful, humane and public-spirited people could enjoy each other's company. Adult politics, therefore, has been something of a disappointment.

I have followed the usual convention of capitalising “Liberal” and “Liberalism” when applying these words to the Liberal Party and its political impact, but otherwise using lower case. This is not always an easy distinction to draw.