I was honoured to be asked in 2009 by the then governor, Mervyn King, to undertake a single-volume history of the Bank of England. Other commitments and unavoidable circumstances have delayed the book’s preparation, but the work itself has been both challenging and enjoyable. From the start we were agreed that I would retain complete independence of judgement; and the Bank has admirably kept to its word. We were also agreed that this would be a book for the general reader, not the specialist, and I am very conscious that – for all its length – this is a far from comprehensive account of the Bank’s activities over the years. The reader who wishes to go wider and deeper should in the first instance consult the notable series of books on specific periods of the Bank’s history: Sir John Clapham (1944) on 1694 to 1914; Richard Sayers (1976) on 1891 to 1944; John Fforde (1992) on 1941 to 1958; and Forrest Capie (2010) on the 1950s to 1979. In addition, on the domestic side of the Bank, the reader wanting more should go to W. Marston Acres (1931) for the first two centuries or so and to Elizabeth Hennessy (1992) for 1930 to 1960. I have drawn heavily on the pioneering work of all these historians, as I also have on my own four-volume history of the City of London, for each volume of which I did a considerable amount of archival research at the Bank. At the end of writing this book, I find myself thinking – not for the first time – of the haunting words that Richard Sayers wrote on completing his history: ‘I am all too aware of its imperfections and shortcomings, and can only plead, in the phrase of Hippocrates and Chaucer, “so short the life, so long the craft to learn”.’