These volumes contain selected papers presented at the international conference on group theory held in St Andrews in 1989. The themes of the conference were combinatorial and computational group theory; four leading group theorists (J.A. Green, N.D. Gupta, O.H. Kegel and J.G. Thompson) gave courses whose content is reproduced here. Also included are refereed papers presented at the meeting. The many articles with their wealth of references demonstrate the richness and vitality of modern group theory and its varied connections with other areas of mathematics. These will be essential references for research and postgraduate mathematicians whose work involves group theory.