To the majority of contemporary geographers, the contribution of the years covered by this book will seem little more than, at best, an historical footnote to the infinitely more voluminous and relevant material of the succeeding four decades. For the undergraduate in particular, the concepts and the names which have surfaced will have scant significance save as grist for the mill in the historical sections of the near ubiquitous ‘principles’ or ‘general’ paper. Even then, it is depressingly rare for the work quoted to have been read in original form rather than in abstract in a later commentary. Indeed, one of the most respected of those commentaries (Johnston 1983) itself takes 1945 as its initial point of reference.

Those years, however, have far more than antiquarian value, as the most cursory reading of the chapters of this volume bears witness. They laid the effective foundations of university teaching in the discipline, spanning its emergence as an honours degree subject in its own right to its acceptance as a core subject in any credible university curriculum. They nourished a conceptual and intellectual framework which still has relevance despite the ferment and the fruits of more recent years. They nurtured a fellowship in which personal relationships had a significance beyond academic intercourse, and gave geography a fervour and freshness which underpinned its intellectual attractions, and which happily in large measure it still retains.