SANDY Grant has been waiting for this volume for some time. It was originally intended to mark his retirement and we apologise profusely to him, to his partner and champion, Alison Grant, and also to the contributors to this volume, for the delay. We can offer no excuses. But we do hope that Sandy will, nonetheless, enjoy what follows and we genuinely look forward to hearing his characteristically informed, animated and thought-provoking critique of the essays published here in his honour. The various articles in the collection reflect not only Sandy's personal academic connections and the legacy he has left through his doctoral students, but also the various fields of study to which he has made important contributions. The themes of kingship, lordship and identity have all featured prominently in his publications – which are discussed in more detail below. In this volume the first of these themes is central to the chapter by Judith Green, a former colleague of Sandy's at Queens University Belfast, and to that by Aly Macdonald. Both investigate royal reputations, Green examining the kingship and historical reputation of Alexander I of Scotland (1107–24), who has been thoroughly (and perhaps unfairly) overshadowed by his younger brother, David I (1124–53). David is generally regarded as a man who brought about a sweeping transformation of the twelfth-century kingdom. Although Alexander's reign did not witness the influx of ‘Frankish’ aristocrats and churchmen that marked David's rule, Green highlights evidence that King Alexander was alive to wider currents of ecclesiastical reform, to new ways of presenting and justifying royal status, and had extensive social and cultural ties outwith his own realm, not least through his rather mysterious wife, Sibyl. David's kingship may not, then, have represented as radical a break from that of his predecessor as has sometimes been claimed. Macdonald, meanwhile, tackles the English king Henry V (1413–22), laying out a compelling case that Henry's reputation for shrewd and effective diplomacy was ill-deserved. Macdonald's analysis of the response of the Scottish nobility to Henry's unwisely belligerent and threatening approach to their realm chimes with Sandy's own consistent emphasis on the willingness of the Scots, throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, to pursue aggressive military and diplomatic strategies against their southern neighbour when these seemed advantageous, appropriate or unavoidable.