A small group of urban historians met informally at the annual conference of theEconomic History Society in 1962. In 1963, H.J. (Jim) Dyos, very much in chargeof the enterprise, began circulating a subscription newsletter. The early issuesof the Urban History Newsletter (the ancestorof this journal) reveal the slow and hesitant way in which the Urban HistoryGroup formed, growing rapidly in membership but reluctant to develop into aformal society and determined against the establishment of a conventionaljournal. There were after-dinner talks in 1966 and 1967 but only in April 1968was a full-day meeting established in a pattern still followed 40 years on. Thislight-hearted account is based on Dyos'‘editorials’ in the Newsletter and personal memories of the man himself.