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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As so often before, I am particularly grateful to George Comninel, who read the whole manuscript and made his customarily generous and insightful suggestions. My thanks also to Paul Cartledge, Janet Coleman and Gordon Schochet, who read parts of the manuscript and made useful comments but cannot, of course, be held responsible for any failures on my part to take good advice. Perry Anderson kindly agreed to my last-minute request for a quick reading of the whole text and made some very helpful suggestions. And special thanks to Ed Broadbent, who brilliantly played the role of every writer’s dream audience, the intelligent general reader. I owe a great deal to his keenly critical eye, together with his unfailing support and encouragement.

My greatest debt is to Neal Wood. Many years ago, we decided that one day we would write a social history of political theory together. Somehow we never got around to it. There were always other projects to embark on and complete. Yet when, after his death, I set out to do it on my own, he remained in a sense the co-author. It was he who first introduced me to the history of political thought; it was he who coined the phrase, the ‘social history of political theory’; and this project would have been inconceivable without his rich body of work in the field and his example of scholarly integrity combined with passionate engagement.