Book excerpt: '. . . history is my passion. Writing it, teaching it, reading it fills the days and years of my life. In all passions, there is pain and pleasure.' Greg Dening In this collection of writings-some new, some previously published-Greg Dening reflects on his experiences both as a historian and a participant in history. Performances brings together the personal and the scholarly, demonstrating how our lives are saturated with history, how we can only understand our present through our consciousness of the past and how in thinking about the past we mirror the time and place of our own living. Each of these essays can be enjoyed on its own, yet throughout them all run the common themes of the intricate relationships between past and present, the personal and the political, historical research and the imagination. Dening writes with elegance and candour, inviting readers to reflect upon their own participation in the 'performance' of history.