The present volume emanates from a conference entitled ‘Domesday Now’ held at The National Archives on 17 September 2011. After a decade of vigorous debate on the purpose of the Domesday enterprise, it was gratifying to bring together almost all the specialist scholars in the field to take stock of what had been achieved and what had yet to be done. There was no sudden outbreak of agreement. At the end of the day the fault lines that had characterized differing understandings of the Domesday inquest and Domesday Book remained as visible as ever. However, a consensus had emerged on the way forward. It became clear that there was no prospect of resolving the issues raised without a new edition of the Domesday texts. The papers presented here provide the intellectual underpinning for such a project. Six of the seven read on the day have been revised for this publication; the rest have been especially commissioned to complement them. Together they cover almost all the major areas of disagreement. Sadly the late Nicholas Brooks was unable to complete his chapter on the Domesday Monachorum before his death in 2014.

We thank Elizabeth Hallam-Smith, a former keeper of Domesday Book, for chairing the conference and for her unstinting enthusiasm and continuing support for a new edition of Domesday Book. We are also grateful to Jess Nelson and the staff of The National Archives for the smooth running of the conference. The authors in their turn express their thanks to an anonymous reader for several incisive comments. The images from Domesday Book are reproduced with the kind permission of Alecto Historical Editions. Finally, we are indebted to Caroline Palmer of Boydell and Brewer for commissioning the book and Nick Bingham for seeing it through the press.