Peter Townsend, who sadly passed away in June 2009, had a long career researching an exceptional range of topics within the social sciences and campaigning against social inequalities.

This reader brings together for the first time a collection of his most distinctive work, allowing readers to review changes and continuities over the past six decades, and reflect on social issues that have returned to the fore today. A particular feature of the volume is in tracing the links between empirical evidence and both social theory and social policy, and how those disciplines intersect.

This reader will provide a teaching and learning resource for students in different disciplines of the social sciences and will also provide an insight into the development of one scientist's entire intellectual approach. We hope it will be a fitting memorial to his life and work.

"..this reader is an inspiration to us to collect and publish evidence in the cause of social change - and that, I'm sure, is the legacy for which Townsend would have wished. (It) is everything which students of social policy would have asked for." Citizens' Income Newsletter

David Gordon is Director of the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research and Professor of Social Justice in the School for Policy

Studies, University of Bristol.

Ruth Levitas has been Professor of Sociology at Bristol since 2001, and a member of the Department of Sociology at Bristol since 1979.

Peter Phillimore is professor of social anthropology at Newcastle University, in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology.

Chris Phillipson has held the post of Professor of Applied Social Studies and Social Gerontology, at the University of Keele since 1988. C

Margot E. Salomon is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for the Study of Human Rights and Law Department, London School of Economics and

Political Science.

Alan Walker joined the Department of Sociological Studies at the University of Sheffield in 1977 and has been a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer

and Reader in Social Policy.

Nicola Yeates is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the Open University and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Dublin City University.