The genesis of this volume was an evening telephone conversation between the late Timothy Reuter and myself which concluded that a conference must be organised in Frank Barlow's honour. The subject of the conference chose itself instantly. Frank has published a vast amount during his career, including numerous editions of texts and a textbook still in print fifty years after it was first published. But the writing of biography has been such a significant and influential part of his work that simply no other topic was appropriate. If memory serves me right, it was Tim who was the driving force at the start. His tragic death so soon after the conference started to be planned deprived it of all that his imagination and energy would have brought to it. It also took from him the opportunity to pay tribute to a historian whom he had long admired deeply – I well remember the first conversation we ever had, on a Paddington-bound train in the early 1970s, after the interviews for a lectureship at Exeter in which Tim was successful and I was not, in which he expressed to me this admiration warmly and fulsomely. He and Frank thus became colleagues until Frank's retirement in 1976 and remained friends thereafter. While this volume is dedicated to Frank Barlow, it must also be dedicated to the memory of Tim Reuter.

The organisation of the conference, entitled ‘The Limits of Medieval Biography’ and held at the University of Exeter between 10 and 12 July in 2003, was taken forward with exemplary efficiency by Julia Crick and Sarah Hamilton.