In 1978 I published a small book about paediatric endocrinology. Since that time, there has been an amazing advance in many aspects of the practice of the discipline and some of my more loyal friends, Dr Stephen Herman in particular, have been kind enough to say that it is time for the subject to be brought up to date in a completely new book. This is it – and I thank Peter Silver and the Cambridge University Press for the opportunity to prepare it. Mary Sanders was extremely efficient in getting the book into print.

The Press told me that in a monograph ‘an expert describes and discusses the area of his own expertise for the benefit and interest of others’ which is what I have done. I hope that it will be useful to general paediatricians and endocrinologists. It encapsulates my view of the subject, which may be iconoclastic in places, and it is a practical book not a major work of critical analysis heavily referenced for the specialist in the field – I edit a much bigger volume for that purpose.

I would probably never have summoned the strength to set pen to paper in this venture were it not for the opportunity afforded to me to undertake a sabbatical exchange visit to the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne where I wrote the book.