Occasionally it seems as if it might have been more pleasant to have studied Social Policy in, say, the 1950s. From the fluid and turbulent perspective of the 1990s it appears an era of relative tranquillity and certainty: there were fewer books to read, apparently more certainty of both purpose and means (although it is a sign of our times that there is currently a revisionist debate going on about the reality of the so-called ‘Butskellite consensus’), and generally less to know. It is said that in the thirteenth century Roger Bacon was able to compend all the scientific knowledge of his day in a single work. This has long been impossible even for any single discipline, but at least the latest edition of the Social Policy Review does give the reader a taste of the range and diversity of issues which now characterises the subject.