The liquid crystalline state has been known for about a century and has been studied by many techniques. Nuclear magnetic resonance has been used to study mesophases for thirty years, but it has been in very recent years that advances in this form of spectroscopy have led to a rapid growth in its applications to the study both of liquid crystals and of solutes dissolved in them. It has become apparent that no other method of studying liquid crystals can yield such a wealth of data and it is unrivalled as a means of probing the behaviour of the molecules in mesophases. There has also been a...