In September 1994, a small group of people—mostly professional colleagues and friends who had worked with one another over the years—met for a week in the small town of New London, New Hampshire, to consider the future of literacy teaching; to discuss what would need to be taught in a rapidly changing near future, and how this should be taught.

As it turned out, there were multiple ironies in the very idea of New London. Now one billion people speak that difficult and messy little language, English, spoken four centuries ago by only about a million or so people in the vicinity of London, old London. The story of the language, and the story of the last few centuries, including its many injustices, is the story of many new Londons. This issue—how the language meets with cultural and linguistic diversity—was one of our main concerns. Then there was the irony of the postcard serenity of this particular New London …