The earliest'text-books'were written-down talk; the Dialo gua de Scaccario, which dates from 1179, is a procedure manual for the Court of the Exchequer, in the form of a conversation between Richard Fitzneal, Bishop of London and one of the Barons of the Exchequer, and one of his juniors (Johnson,1950). Most descriptions of administration to this day are oral, between master and apprentice, and much of it is not written down, partly because it seems so specific to time and place and circumstanced, partly because it has that touch of the illicit or scandalous that inhibits a record-'you can't always say this out loud, bot the facts are that more often than not...