It is only right to give you, as reader, some indication of the reasons for my enthusiasm for water in the environment and its management. To do this, I describe here some particular experiences from my childhood, and subsequently from my student years and professional life. Like many children, my first enjoyable memories of water were at the seaside, attempting to build sandcastles that would defy the persistent encroaching waves, or of being turned upside down by breakers on the sandy beach. I welcomed the challenge of trying to dam streams in the Welsh hills or to skim flat stones across the river at Hay-on-Wye, where my paternal grandparents lived. But water at the seaside was not just an enjoyable experience. I became aware of the awesome power of water when news came of serious flooding from a disastrous surge in the North Sea along the East Anglian coast in 1953, and the unacceptable and devastating floods from the River Lugg invaded the lower part of Leominster, the small country town where I was brought up. Little did I realise then that these events would be seminal in forming the focus of my future career.