Henry Marten, republican firebrand and man about town, believed that a dedicatory Epistle was as a porch to a house, a place where authors gather friends and supporters around themselves to protect them from the storms of potential critics. It pains me to say it, but I do not believe he is right. Others have likened writing a book to giving birth. I do not believe that either, but the imagery may be more appropriate. Producing the bulk of a book is the time when you gather to yourself the thoughts, contributions and criticisms of your friends. The preface marks the symbolic cutting of the umbilical cord and you and your precious thoughts are propelled into the world alone. In the hackneyed phrase of preface-writing, one is grateful to friends and colleagues for their help and contributions, but what goes to press is entirely the author's responsibility.

One of my lecturers at university (not, perhaps significantly, an historian) held that a human being does not have an original thought after the age of twenty-six, but continually refines, builds on and analyses thoughts sown much earlier. This volume certainly bears out that statement, since the simple idea at the heart of this book, which seemed so obvious at the time, came to me as part of my Ph.D. research, and that in itself was a continuation of several years of thought about the nature of republicanism and the British people's love affair with monarchy. When I began I was a lone voice. Only in the USA had Bill Everdell produced his End of Kings, and he too had to wait some time to see it in print. saying, in 1983, ‘they’ll never give you a grant to study that!’ and to the grant-awarding bodies which did not.