WHAT IS RESEARCH IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES FOR? SHOULD (much of) it be financed by the state? How should it be organized? Where should it take place? In the United Kingdom, these questions thud down each morning on the desk of the Chairman of the Economic and Social Research Council, which now has a new home (in Swindon, with its big sister Research Councils) and a new Chairman, Professor Howard Newby. Six years, and more than one chairman, have come and gone since I sat at that desk; I have a short memory, and a full recognition of the duty of a retired bureaucrat — ‘get out, and shut up’. I am not willing or able to bore readers with a description or a critique of recent policies. But my present function gives me a new standpoint; things look different from Strasbourg, and an international perspective helps; above all, my responsibilities now spread widely (although jolly thinly) over the whole range of learning, scholarship, and science. So these are home thoughts from abroad.