For many students and scholars of family law, their first encounter with Brenda Hale is likely to have been through reading The Family, Law and Society: Cases and Materials. First published in 1983, this ground-breaking resource was in print for more than twenty-five years, the sixth edition being published in 2009.

The book inspired me personally as an undergraduate at Warwick University in the early 1980s. As it was a self-consciously radical law school and home to the Law in Context movement, it was no surprise that the hot-off-the-press first edition was the recommended family law textbook. The book opened my eyes to how interesting studying law could and should be and how key family law is as a site for thinking about social change and the role of the state. The invitation to co-author the sixth edition, twenty-six years later, was a huge privilege and pleasure.