Let me start by saying that it is a great privilege and honour to follow in the footsteps of my distinguished predecessors as Director of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies and Editor of its proceedings. Who would have predicted this when in 1978 as a graduate student from the University of Groningen and one of the very few foreigners I attended the First Battle Conference at Battle?

I am most grateful to my predecessor Professor David Bates for the smooth handover. In fact, most of the programme at Winchester was already prepared by him. Neither David nor I could have held the conference in Winchester were it not for the expert guidance, local organisation and practical help we received from Dr Ryan Lavelle and Dr Katherine Weikert. We are most grateful to them and to their student helpers Karl Alvestad, Courtney Konshuh and David McDermott. On the housekeeping side we owe a vote of thanks to Gemma Wheeler-Jones, Conference Operations Manager at the University of Winchester, whose organisation was near perfect. When, due to a flood, we had to move accommodation blocks she and her staff managed the transfer with exceptional efficiency and a minimum of fuss.

We are also very grateful to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Winchester, Professor Elizabeth Stuart, for welcoming us in the Stripe Auditorium. Her opening speech set the tone for Edmund King’s Allen Brown Memorial Lecture, which, appropriately, was devoted to Bishop Henry of Winchester. The lecture drew large crowds thanks to the Friends of Winchester Cathedral who had come out in numbers to hear Professor King’s lecture. We all enjoyed the Deputy Vice-Chancellor’s Reception afterwards. Another highlight of our Winchester stay was the two-hour tour of the cathedral conducted by Dr John Crook. It was a magnificent tour de force, learned, informative but at the same time also lighthearted and humorous.

The year 2014 saw the launch of the Marjorie Chibnall Prize Essay competition in honour of the conference’s former director, Dr Marjorie Chibnall FBA. The winner was Dr Sara Harris, Junior Research Fellow at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, whose essay was praised by the judges for the originality of its subject and the mature reflection on the significance of linguistic study by twelfth-century historians. The Allen Brown Memorial Trust was also able this year to provide two graduate students’ bursaries; they were awarded to Emily Ward and Jennie England.

Finally, I am most grateful for the support of the home team at Boydell for the meticulous copyediting and production of the volume, overseen by Caroline Palmer and Rohais Haughton.

Elisabeth van Houts

January 2015