This book recounts the history and development of the tansverse flute from the middle ages to the present day. It decribes the development from the simple cylinder of the middle ages and the Renaissance, into the elaborate instrument of the Baroque period for which Bach wrote, and into the classical instrument of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. It recounts also the radical alterations by Theobald Boehm which turned it into the flute that is played today. Further sections describe the changes in the materials from which flutes are made and how flutes work. The book is illustrated with many photographs from the greatest collection of flutes in Britain, the Bate Collection of Historical Instruments in Oxford.