Thanks to the generous support of a Research Leave Grant from the AHRC in spring 2010 and research leave granted by the University of Warwick during the previous term, this book was finally completed. I have benefited hugely from the wise comments of readers at Cambridge University Press at different stages of the project, right from the start. The Press's readers have been very generous in their time and constructive in their feedback: I thank both those who remained anonymous, and particularly Joyce Reynolds, who greatly improved the scope and aims of the manual. Jo Crawley Quinn also gave helpful feedback on my section on Tripolitania, and I am grateful to Jo and also Andrew Wilson for allowing me to have a sneak preview of their forthcoming work. Thanks too to Michael Sharp, Liz Hanlon, Jo Lane, Christina Sarigiannidou and their colleagues at Cambridge University Press for their speedy responses to my queries, and to copy-editor Anna Hodson. In compiling the illustrations, I am especially indebted to Manfred Schmidt and Andreas Fassbender at CIL, Berlin, and to Ken Walton at the ICS, London. As always, I could not have completed this without the support and encouragement of my family during the writing of the manual.

Feb. 2011, Warwick