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This work has arisen from lecture courses given by the authors on important topics within functional analysis. The authors, who are all leading researchers, give introductions to their subjects at a level ideal for beginning graduate students, and others interested in the subject. The collection has been carefully edited so as to form a coherent and accessible introduction to current research topics. The first chapter by Professor Dales introduces the general theory of Banach algebras, which serves as a background to the remaining material. Dr Willis then studies a centrally important Banach algebra, the group algebra of a locally compact group. The remaining chapters are devoted to Banach algebras of operators on Banach spaces: Professor Eschmeier gives all the background for the exciting topic of invariant subspaces of operators, and discusses some key open problems; Dr Laursen and Professor Aiena discuss local spectral theory for operators, leading into Fredholm theory.