A small group of urban historians met informally at the annual conference of the Economic History Society in 1962. In 1963, H.J. (Jim) Dyos, very much in charge of the enterprise, began circulating a subscription newsletter. The early issues of the Urban History Newsletter (the ancestor of this journal) reveal the slow and hesitant way in which the Urban History Group formed, growing rapidly in membership but reluctant to develop into a formal society and determined against the establishment of a conventional journal. There were after-dinner talks in 1966 and 1967 but only in April 1968 was a full-day meeting established in a pattern still followed 40 years on. This light-hearted account is based on Dyos' ‘editorials’ in the Newsletter and personal memories of the man himself.