In April 2007, Professor T. C. W. Blanning – Tim to all his friends and now to the scholarly community as well – will celebrate his sixty-fifth birthday, improbable as this will seem. In order to mark this occasion, to celebrate his enormous contribution to the study of modern European history, and to convey a sense of the immense regard in which he is universally held, it was decided to publish a volume of essays dedicated to him and written by some of his many friends and admirers. It takes its cue and also its starting point from Tim's celebrated The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe, 1660–1789 (Oxford University Press, 2002). Contributors were asked to extend the perspectives of that seminal book, and to explore critically how ‘culture’ (defined in the widest sense) was exploited during the ‘long eighteenth century’ to buttress authority in all its forms and how politics infused culture. Coherence was also sought by a decision to concentrate on the period – the long eighteenth century – which has been the principal focus of Tim's own scholarship and on the areas which his work has particularly illuminated: the German-speaking lands, France and Britain. While this, together with the period selected for consideration, had the unfortunate effect of excluding some friends and colleagues who would have been obvious contributors, it was inevitable given the realities of present-day publishing.