The slightly more diverse fare in this year's Transactions reflects two developments. First, the Society has adopted a new format for its regional visits. Whereas previously the visits to UK Higher Education Institutions were accompanied by a formal paper reading by a speaker nominated by the Society, it has been decided to offer our support to regional symposia, preferably involving more than one institution, from which we will publish a selection of papers. The first of these symposia on the subject of ‘Poverty and Welfare in Ireland, c. 1833–1948’ hosted by the Queen's University Belfast and Oxford Brookes University was held at the Institute of Irish Studies at the Queen's University Belfast on 26–7 June 2009, and three of the papers presented are published here. We have also decided that the Gresham Lectures for the Public Understanding of History founded in memory of Colin Matthew deserve a wider audience, and if appropriate, we propose to publish them in Transactions. Charles Saumerez Smith's lecture on the institutionalisation of art in the nineteenth century therefore appears in print here.