This paper opens a special issue (SI) commemorating the contributions of Ronan Paddison (1945–2019), founder and original Editor-in-Chief of Space and Polity. It outlines Paddison’s academic accomplishments before introducing the pieces that follow. It narrates Paddison as scholar, teacher, theorist and critic based on reading a student geographical magazine, the Drumlin, ‘published’ annually 1955–2009. This medium allows glimpses of Paddison as a ‘radical geographer’ nourishing eclectic versions of political and urban geography. The paper raises signposts for many of the concerns, to do with Paddison’s conceptualizing, practising and instructing about ‘space and polity’, covered by the SI as a whole.