Over thirty years ago, in 1973, Richard Vaughan announced in his Charles the Bold that a pupil, Richard Walsh, was engaged upon a doctoral thesis at Hull University entitled ‘Charles the Bold and Italy’. I then wrote that ‘maybe here was the most exciting theme which Burgundian historiography still had to offer’ (Francia, 4, 1976, 762) — a verdict the reader will now find fulfilled and justified. In October 1977 the thesis (comprising 937 pages) was submitted and the following year was approved. Since then the text has been available to scholars on microfilm and on microfilm-print. Moreover, Richard Walsh has subsequently developed themes from it in a number of important published articles, and these touch on certain key aspects (see the list of Walsh's publications in the Appendix to his Bibliography). Yet the thesis itself has remained unpublished. It ought to have been printed shortly after completion, and why this did not happen I shall never understand. The subject is magnificent, the study supported with archival research of exceptional breadth and depth, its mastery virtually perfect. My only personal regret remains that a prosopographical list of the Italians in Burgundian service does not enrich it.

But here, at last, is the thesis itself, slightly reduced in length and revised. It is published thanks to the insight and stubborn insistence of Dr Cecil Clough. In March 1996 he and I met in Paris at the Conference ‘Les Princes et l'Histoire’, where over a dinner we chatted about ‘cabbages and kings’. Incautiously I remarked that unfortunately Richard Walsh's thesis remained unpublished. He told me of a failed 1985 attempt with a draft here only slightly amended. He nailed me down, stressing the necessity of my doing something to promote publication, namely by reading the draft, and revising it in the light of over a decade's published researches, by contributing addenda et corrigenda. This, he stressed, I uniquely could do, given my specialist knowledge, whereas Richard Walsh could not, since the obligation of employment had necessitated his turning to other matters in the mid-1980s. Alas! such a task in detail was what I could not and cannot do: ars longa, vita brevis.