In September 1985 full-time work began, under the auspices of the Institute of Historical Research, on writing a co-operative, up-to-date volume on the history of the London County Council to appear in its centenary year, 1989. The inauguration of this ambitious project occurred-fitly in some ways, in others ominously-at just the time that the Greater London Council was about to disappear and with it a 100-year-old assumption that ‘unitary metropolitan government’ is inevitable and natural. Nobody thinks that the problems of London government are going to go away after GLC abolition, and the most exciting thing that might come out of a reinterpretation of the LCC's history is that it could inform future debate about what metropolitan government has been and can be, and what it has done and can do for Londoners. That is certainly our intention.