The perennial difficulty with editing a watch magazine is in trying to attain some sort of balance, so that each issue covers at least part of the range of stories that come under this head. This means making sure to include the technical side, design and collecting, trying to balance the rare and the accessible and the new with the familiar and the news with the longer-term stories. With deserving contenders in each of the categories, and plenty of others not listed here, the problem we face is one of deciding what to leave out - a luxury that has not always been the case.

In this bumper, end-of-year issue we cross the ground from Urwerk to Burberry via a Thomas Mudge watch from the Royal Collection, stopping only to recount the latest chapter in the Opus story and to welcome Alpina's affordable style. We also take a closer look at Ralph Lauren's 2012 Sporting Safari, Jaeger-LeCoultre's Duomètre Sphérotourbillon and Ulysse Nardin's new Marine Chronometer Manufacture. Three of the greatest names in contemporary horology tell us why the traditions of the past need preserving and we start a new series looking at classic movements through the decades.