This book is a tribute to John Morrill by a number of his former students, published to coincide with John's sixty-fifth birthday, an appropriate moment to celebrate his extraordinary achievements as a teacher and scholar.

It is very difficult to capture the career and influence of such an eminent and influential figure, but a crucial feature of John's contribution is that it has been made not simply through his own writing but across a much broader front, particularly through his teaching and wider advocacy for both his field and his profession. This volume is edited by two of his former students, and all the contributions are written by his students engaging with central themes in his work; that is, we hope, a fitting way to mark this distinctive contribution.

John's teaching has always moved in step with his research interests. His advanced courses engaged successively with the study of English government, the British problem, the life and reputation of Oliver Cromwell and latterly with the Irish rebellion of 1641, while his outline courses followed a similar trajectory, also taking in his thesis about the religious roots of seventeenth-century political conflict. Always the concern with personalities came through, sometimes explicitly, as in a 1995 course on ‘Stuart politics and personalities: eight case studies’. The overview of John's published work offered in the introduction therefore summarizes an oeuvre that has unfolded in symbiosis with the teaching that means so much to him.