Living with lambda

This talk presents a brief overview of recent results pertaining to the cos mological constant 'Lambda'. I summarize the observational situation focuss ing on observations of high redshift Type Ia supenovae which suggest Lambda > 0. Observations of small angular anisotropies in the cosmic microwave ba ckground complement Type Ia supernovae observations and both CMB and Sn can be combined to place strong constraints on the value of Lambda. The presen ce of a small Lambda -term increases the age of the universe and slows down the formation of large scale structure. I also review recent theoretical a ttempts to generate a small h-term at the current epoch and a model indepen dent approach for determining the cosmic equation of state.