  The starting point of these lectures is an introduction to the weak
interactions of quarks and the Standard-Model description of CP violation,
where the central role is played by the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix and
the corresponding unitarity triangles. Since the B-meson system will govern the
stage of (quark) flavour physics and CP violation in this decade, it will be
our main focus. We shall classify B-meson decays, introduce the theoretical
tools to deal with them, investigate the requirements for non-vanishing
CP-violating asymmetries, and discuss the main strategies to explore CP
violation and the preferred avenues for physics beyond the Standard Model to
enter. This formalism is then applied to discuss the status of important
B-factory benchmark modes, where we focus on puzzling patterns in the data that
may indicate new-physics effects, as well as the prospects for B-decay studies
at the LHC.
