An element of personal selection is essential in the writing of history. One can do no more than cast an eye over the records of meetings and decisions, achievements and conflicts, struggles and defeats, victories and frustrations. It cannot all be reproduced. And after a mere ten years it is difficult to sift what is ephemeral from that which will prove of lasting and fateful importance.

Our Founders (Hitch, Gaskell, Thurnam and others), who established the Association of Medical Officers of Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane, started an evolutionary process which is continuing to the present day.

Sir Martin Roth and Professor Linford Rees have well documented the achievements of the past ten years, to which I can add but little except to say how proud I am to have been able to join in with these activities and try to continue their far-sighted policies. Nevertheless, there is much that remains to be done, not so much because of what we have failed to do as because of the constantly changing situation in which we work.

The years 1980 and 1981 have given the North-West Division a stimulating variety of influences experienced in the make-up of the Executive Committee and the interaction within the membership, Inceptors to Fellows in the ordinary meetings and two Annual General Meetings.