Several institutions and individuals have helped me in writing this book. King’s College London and University College London both provided periods of sabbatical leave, and the Leverhulme Trust awarded a Research Fellowship. I would like to be able to say that the periods of leave (merely) transformed the project, but the truth is starker – it could not have been attempted without them. The Law Faculty Library at the University of Cambridge, and especially the Librarian, Lesley Dingle, the Archive Centre at King’s College Cambridge and the University of Warwick were extremely helpful with manuscript sources. Some of the material was presented at conferences and research seminars, and I would particularly like to acknowledge the helpful comments of members of the Oxford Private Law Discussion Group, the UCL Private Law Group and the Staff Seminar at the City University of Hong Kong. I have benefited from insightful comments on draft chapters made by Eric Barendt, Susan Chan, Maria Lee and Charles Mitchell. Shida Galletti worked as a research assistant on the manuscripts of Kurt Lipstein and Harold Gutteridge, which are produced as appendices, and I remain especially grateful for her help with Lipstein’s Italian sources.