Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental process with a rich variety of aspects and applications in astrophysical, space, and laboratory plasmas. It is one that has fascinated us both for much of our research careers, so that we have from time to time felt drawn to return to it after working on other topics and to ponder it anew or view it from a different angle.

Indeed, it was reconnection that brought us together in the first place, since one of us (TGF) went to work as a postdoc with the other in 1980 on the subject of reconnection in solar flares. Our initial meeting in Edinburgh at the start of this collaboration was rather amusing, since a friend had misleadingly described Eric Priest as a tall old man with ginger hair, and so the inaccuracy of this description did not exactly help us to find each other in the crowded airport!

At present the whole field of reconnection is a huge, vibrant one that is developing along many different lines, as can be seen by the fact that a recent science citation search produced a listing of 1,069 published articles written on this subject in only the past three years. We are therefore well aware of the impossibility of comprehensively covering the whole field and apologise in advance to those who may be disappointed that we have not found space to discuss their work on reconnection.