The Pursuit of Power. Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000

x Preface

and Balliol College, which afforded me the same hospitality during my

tenure of the Eastman Professorship in 1980–81.

With this encouragement and stimulus, the book has now come to

its final shape. Needless to say, remaining defects and infelicities are

my very own. They would be far more numerous without the scrutiny

of my wife Elizabeth and daughter Ruth, who resolutely attempted,

here as elsewhere, to make me write better by insisting that I say what

I really mean and mean what I actually say.

28 November 1981