Foreword (BAR 1)

The British Academy aims to publish a regular account of its activities by means of its new biannual Review.

The origins of this new publication lie with the Fellows of the Academy, who expressed the wish to have a vehicle for promoting the role of the Academy more widely. This Review is therefore aimed at a general audience, as well as the Fellowship. It will, cumulatively, fulfil the function of providing a conspectus of the Academy’s activities hitherto covered by the Annual Report.

Readers will, indeed, find inside much of the material that used to be included in the Academy’s Annual Report. However, the publishing of a biannual review allows for a more expansive reporting on Academy events, and fuller accounts of certain activities. Following the winding up of its Humanities Research Board, the Academy has been able to devote more of its resources to its core activities as a learned society, and this Review will carry reports on the enhanced programme of meetings and events, as well as publishing articles on Academy Research Projects. It is a pleasure to include short extracts from lectures delivered in the rooms of the Academy, as well as brief reports on meetings. Whilst lectures and symposia will in most cases be published in due course in the Proceedings of the British Academy, it is hoped that these snippets will give the flavour of an event, in advance of full publication, as well as illustrating the range of activity undertaken each year by the Academy.

The autumn issue of the Review will in general cover events from January to June (up to and including the AGM at the beginning of July), and the spring issue will cover events from July to December.

In this first issue of the Review, an account of the whole of the academic session 1998–99 is included. Any comments on this issue, and suggestions on how the content of the Review might be developed, will be warmly welcomed.