I am delighted to have been invited to write something to introduce Clive Hodges' Cobbold & Kin, having greatly enjoyed previews of several of his lively and compelling biographical essays. Eighteen of his thirty-two subjects have their reward, a tangible taste of immortality, with entries by other authors in the pages of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, but in that great work there is a formality of treatment by which Clive Hodges was not bound. The jacket text warns us not to expect too many brewers and Ipswich Town directors, and the mixture is far more eclectic. It is fascinating how many great men and women have Cobbold connections, their genes and that surname often discreetly hidden from sight. One is tempted to conclude that if you scratch the surface of a Cobbold life something great and glorious will emerge.

Around Suffolk, and certainly here in Ipswich, there are traces of Cobbolds everywhere. At the civic church of St Mary-le-Tower stands the churchyard cross for the martyred bishop of Melanesia (see page 43), and in the south aisle the large urn memorial in honour of the bountiful and creative Elizabeth (see page 65). At St Clement's church there is a magnificent brass memorial to John Chevallier Cobbold (see page 15) and a headstone, mounted against the west wall of the south aisle, to Thomas Cobbold, the son of the founder, who brought the brewing from Harwich in 1746 and died in 1767.