This book has been many years in the making, and I have accumulated plenty of debts along the way. The first thanks should go to the two bodies that funded the majority of this work. The doctoral research that formed the original germ of this book was undertaken at the University of Manchester and was generously funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. More recently, I was the recipient of a British Academy (BA) Postdoctoral Fellowship held at the University of Leicester. This fellowship was instrumental in allowing me the time and space to undertake new research and work the book into its current form. I am extremely grateful to the BA for this, along with all the additional support the Academy provided along the way. I was very fortunate to hold my fellowship at Leicester’s Centre for Urban History (CUH), which remains one of the foremost centres for the study of the urban past. CUH not only provided the perfect intellectual environment but also offered me an especially warm and friendly welcome.