Two years ago, as I entered my first Anniversary, I contemplated the portraits of my predecessors; like the ghosts in Ruddigore, many generations of them stepped from the wall to tell me my prerogatives and duties and obligations and how little chance I had of meeting them with credit; and now the moment has come when I too am a portrait and step back into the wall to haunt my successors. This has prompted me to ponder a little more deeply the nature of our craft and of our kind. I am myself a historian, and make no further excuse for quoting, not for the first time, a favourite description of the historian at work, from Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesie.
