Foreword (BAR 3)

The British Academy aims to publish a regular account of its activities by means of its new biannual Review. Cumulatively, it fulfils the function of providing a conspectus of the Academy's activities previously covered by the Annual Report.

This issue of the Review covers events and activities that took place during the first six months of the year, up to and including the AGM which took place in early July 2000. During this period, a wide ranging series of lectures and conferences has taken place. In most cases, full publication will follow in the Proceedings of the British Academy, and a selection of extracts from some of the lectures is included in this issue.

As well as administering a flourishing series of events and publications, international activity and research grants, the Academy prides itself on its prestigious programme of research appointments, ranging from Professorships, Research Readerships, and Senior Research Fellowships, to the three-year Postdoctoral Fellowships for outstanding younger scholars. The holders of research appointments play an important part in the academic life of the Academy, and it is hoped that regular accounts of their achievements will feature in this Review. Recent winners of the senior competitions are announced in the current issue. And, as well as a report on this year’s PDF competition and annual Symposium, it is a pleasure to include articles from two of the Academy’s PDFs, Dr Henry writing on a Renaissance artist, and Dr Kebbell on the accuracy of witnesses.

The Academy Research Projects have formed a central core to the Academy’s activities for many years, and in this issue there are reports from two very different types of Project: the self-contained work on John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs; and the patient, long-term endeavour to record all the medieval stained glass in Britain, which is part of an international collaborative project under the auspices of the Union Académique Internationale. This issue also contains a report on the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music, a project supported by the Academy, which will feed into an existing Academy Research Project, Early English Church Music.

This is the third issue of the Review, and the Academy will be pleased to receive comments and suggestions on how the content might be developed in the future.