Although developments in fluid mechanics continue at a heady pace, and are reported in JFM at about 800 pages per month, things in the editorial management of JFM change only slowly. There is a continuity among the JFM Editorial Team and among the policies they espouse and implement that appears to be appreciated by the fluid mechanics community. A major change has, however, occurred from January 1999, in that George Batchelor has, after 43 years as Editor, stepped down from the day-to-day handling of papers and from the formulation of policies and practices, and allowed himself to be named on our masthead as Founding Editor. I say ‘allowed’ because George's initial wish was not to be so named, feeling that this might be seen as an immodest and presumptuous title. But Founding Editor is exactly what George was and is. He launched JFM in May 1956, having persuaded Taylor & Francis to be the publisher and printer, and having enlisted the help of G. F. Carrier, W. C. Griffith and M. J. Lighthill as Associate Editors, and T. Brooke Benjamin and I. Proudman as Assistant Editors. Then, as now, all members of the JFM Editorial Team were to work autonomously in the handling of papers, with complete delegated authority and similar workloads, but all following similar procedures and with similar philosophies, and all under the watchful eye of G. K. B.