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  • Preface
  • Christopher Dyer, Peter Coss, and Chris Wickham

The origins of this book are described in the Introduction. Briefly, Rodney Hilton's friends, colleagues and admirers, in the year after his death in 2002, participated in a conference not just to celebrate his work, but to indicate new directions in the historical themes to which he gave special prominence. The venture was encouraged and assisted by Jean Birrell, Rodney's widow, who also translated the paper by Monique Bourin. The essays in this book were presented as papers at the conference.

The conference attracted eighty participants, who demonstrated Rodney Hilton's international reputation by travelling from twelve different countries. The event was organized impeccably by Heather Swanson, and facilities were provided by the University of Birmingham. Barrie Dobson, Janos Bak and Paul Slack chaired sessions. Other contributors included Halil Berktay who responded to the session on the 'Transition from feudalism to capitalism'. Six contributors from overseas were funded by the British Academy, for whose support we are extremely grateful. The conference was held in a convivial and positive atmosphere, and the papers provoked questions and comments from the participants which helped to improve them as published essays.

We received consistent support and encouragement in the planning and financing of the conference, and in the preparation of this book, from the Past and Present Society, and particularly from the chairman of the Board, Paul Slack, and from the co-editor, Lyndal Roper. Three anonymous referees provided constructive criticism and propelled us forward through the last stages of revision and editing.

We thank everyone who has been involved in this book, but above all we express our profound gratitude to Rodney Hilton, whose acuteness of mind, commitment to ideas, enthusiasm, energy and boisterous good humour not only enabled him to produce so much excellent scholarly work, but also inspired so many others to follow his example. [End Page 9]

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