Reputedly an oft used curse among the literati was ‘May you write a book!’. Equally, among scientists prolific authors who still complain bitterly to their editors about the trials and tribulations of completing the latest commission are legion. In the area of scientific texts it is generally true that as soon as you have committed something to paper it is out of date. Consequently such books are at the mercy of the reviewers, who can easily point to the built-in obsolescence of the product. In view of these factors one might ask what prompted us to write this book; were we courageous or just foolhardy? The answer is neither.

We formed the view that in recent years sufficient new experimental evidence concerning polymers at interfaces had been obtained by the application of new techniques (and there had been an equivalent increase in the range of theoretical descriptions available) that it was worth trying to write a monograph in the attempt to bring these two strands together in a unified way. The combination of the two authors (one a physicist, one a physical chemist) also seemed useful, in that the rigour of either discipline could be tempered by intelligent questions from the non-expert.