ABSTRACT
We are indebted to Rupert Taylor and all the contributors to this volume for engaging our work. Some support our arguments, strongly or mildly. Some were so kind that we feared our retirement Festschrift had been prematurely drafted. We need not have worried. Others remain entirely unreconciled, but their continuing disagreement enables readers to appraise the debate, and we owe them Oscar Wilde’s judgement, “There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”1
