An international conference ‘Groups - St. Andrews 1985’ was held in the Mathematical Institute, University of St. Andrews, Scotland during the period 27 July to 10 August 1985. The initial planning for the conference began in August 1981 and in May 1983 invitations were given to Professor Seymour Bachmuth (Santa Barbara, California), Professor Gilbert Baumslag (City University, New York), Dr Peter Neumann (Queen's College, Oxford), Dr James Roseblade (Jesus College, Cambridge) and Professor Jacques Tits (College de France, Paris). They all accepted the invitation to give lecture courses consisting of four or five lectures each and these courses formed the main part of the first week of the conference. They have all contributed major articles to this volume based on these lecture courses. Automorphisms of soluble groups, the topic of Seymour Bachmuth's lectures, is written up in two articles, the second being contributed by his co-worker Horace Mochizuki.

In the second week of the conference there were twelve one-hour invited lectures. This volume contains articles based on eight of these talks. In addition there was a full programme of seminars, the remaining articles of this book arising from these lectures. A companion volume to this book, published as a part of the Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society, contains articles based on two of the one-hour invited lectures and a number of articles based on some of the research seminars.