Books which are merely a compilation of statutes, statutory instruments and a little other appropriate material have become commonplace in the last few years. The reason is not hard to see—they are useful. Dealing with statutory material has become an increasingly wearing task in recent years. Parliament’s habit of simply amending earlier legislation and sometimes merely replacing sections of earlier Acts makes cross-reference difficult. Even where it is possible to purchase the individual statutes from HMSO (and in the case of older material it is not always possible), the cost is prohibitive and one gets the unamended version. These books show the Acts in their amended forms without the need to chase several different sources. A classic example is the Sale of Goods Act 1979, which has been amended three times in the last two years, affecting 10 or so major sections. These books merely show the amended versions and none of the three new Acts need a separate mention.

Students find these books indispensible for general reference and as a time saver. They are always available, whereas statutes can rarely be taken out of libraries. It is often arranged that students can take statute books into examinations. For the student market, at least, this means that annotations are an unwanted addition, which might make them unsuitable for this purpose. None of these books falls into that trap.

These three books generally cover Commercial and Consumer Law. Since there is little agreement on what constitutes these subjects, one might have expected a wide divergence of contents, but not so. Some 31 statutes, 10 statutory instruments and two UN Conventions are common to all of them. Sale, insurance, agency, carriage and banking are all covered to some extent, together with basic consumer/retail materials. Indeed, as between Rose and Hooley, the difference lies in merely three or four rather peripheral choices. Hooley has some notes giving the source of amendments, a feature common to Pitt, but not contained in Rose. Pitt’s book is much larger than the other two, containing about double the contents. The additional material is all useful, covering mainly bills of sale and