How English textbooks on insurance law have changed over the last few decades. Not since the early 19th century has English insurance law been endowed with so many excellent texts, for both practitioner and student, incisively analysing and explaining the general principles involved. Gone are the days when insurance textbooks consisted of little more than a long line of generally dry and unconnected summations of all the decided cases the author could uncover on a particular point; when the importance of precedent largely outweighed any consideration of principle.

The latest addition, and a prime example of the current state of English scholarship in the field of the law of marine insurance, is Francis Rose’s Marine Insurance: Law and Practice . Rose is a prolific and highly respected author and his trying his hand at a general text on the law of marine insurance was long overdue.

Let me declare at the outset that he did not disappoint. This is a very good book that advances current understanding of the general principles of English marine insurance law in several important respects. Given the continuing debate in several jurisdictions on the possible amendment of legislation based on the Marine Insurance Act 1906 (Australia), or on the introduction of such legislation (the United States and South Africa), as well as a renewed interest in and investigation (by the (the Comité Maritime International) of the possibility of attaining closer international uniformity of marine insurance law and practice, it will have, and rightfully deserves to have, a wide audience and no doubt an influence outside of England.

The focus, throughout, is the distillation and explanation of the relevant general principles. As the codifying Marine Insurance Act in all but a few instances merely sets out the default position (that which will apply if the parties have not agreed otherwise), it rightfully serves only as the starting point (the Act as well as other relevant legislative enactments are taken up in appendices). Sufficient attention is therefore also paid to the express terms employed in the London market (again a selection of these is appended to the text). As the author rightly observes, “the true flavour of the law of marine insurance can only be appreciated through consideration of both the underlying law and what participants in the market do in practice” (at viii). Judicial decisions, too, feature prominently and recent pronouncements in particular are given full consideration, where necessary with appropriate criticism (see, eg, the discussion of The Prestrioka [2003] 2 Lloyd’s Rep 327 (CA)).

The work offers numerous examples of where novel explanation and systematization cast fresh light on and make for a better understanding of familiar principles. Particularly noteworthy in this regard is the exhaustive treatment of the aversion and minimization of loss (at 373 et seq ); the clever summary of the circumstances under which a claim for a total loss is possible (at 440–441); the clear exposition of the different legal and popular meanings of the word “abandonment” (at 457–458)—particularly confusing and often confused, given that in appropriate circumstances the insured has a right to abandon his interest in the subject-matter insured while the insurer may acquire

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