ABSTRACT
If you are a sharp-eyed reader who likes to start toward the end of a book, you might have noticed that in Chapter 21 I allude to the way in which this book came about. At an excellent conference in 2006 a group of us were standing around discussing some of the speeches we had heard, both at the conference and on previous occasions, that seemed to have an element of gravitas—speeches that were re-visited and found their way into the verbal history of the field—yet often did not get as far as the published literature. If parts of them were published, it was in a more sanitized and literate form—losing the raw statement of the personal; the views and experience that had made them so attractive to the seated audience.
