An account of some recent developments in the chemistry of lead(IV) reagents, and of the rationale which underpins this work, is reported in this lecture. I hope to demonstrate that the synthetic utility of lead(IV) reagents may have been underestimated, and that this may have arisen at least in part to the general perception of the toxicity of these compounds, the need to use stoichiometric quantities of the metal reagent and to reaction pathways which have been generally thought to be cationic or radical in character. The possibility that many reactions of lead(IV) could proceed via reductive elimination type processes has hitherto not been considered, and this may nave limited the perceived scope of its possible reactions. Some novel reactions which could possibly proceed through ligand metathesis and ligand coupling steps are presented.