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My first debt of gratitude is to the trustees of the Hamlyn Trust for inviting me to deliver the 52nd series of Hamlyn lectures in the millennium year, 2000. Those lectures were subsequently published under the title Does the United Kingdom Still Have a Constitution?, and this book draws to some extent on them. Had it not been for the Hamlyn trustees, I might not have been impelled to start thinking seriously about the constitutional upheaval that has recently overtaken the UK.
Three friends—Sam Arnold-Forster, Ivor Crewe and Seth H. Dubin—took the trouble to read the entire manuscript of the book, and I am grateful to all three of them for their patience and assiduity as well as for pointing out a range of minor slips and major solecisms. A larger number of friends and colleagues were kind enough to read and comment on individual chapters. They, too, saved me from committing egregious errors, not least because several of them are experts on topics covered below that are, or were, largely new to me. Under this heading, I am especially grateful to Sir Jeremy Beecham, David Butler, Lord Butler of Brockwell (Sir Robin Butler), Sir John Dyson, Chris Game, Peter Hennessy, Jeffrey Jowell, Iain McLean, Dawn Oliver and Lord Wilson of Dinton (Sir Richard Wilson). I would like, of course, to be able to blame them for all the errors of fact and interpretation that undoubtedly remain, but, alas, that option is not open to me. I hope any or all of them will feel free to dissent publicly from any of the views expressed here with which they disagree.
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