Professor Treitel’s book, which deals exhaustively with the doctrine of frustration and more compendiously with the law relating to force majeure, is a feast of scholarly work in the best common law tradition. At every point Treitel is careful to examine, to categorize, and to show the subtlety of, the case law. Two examples may be chosen at random. First, writers on this subject are often content to offer a quick line about absolute liability and to cite Paradine v. Jane (1647) Aleyn 26. Treitel offers over 10 pages dealing with that case and shows that it stands for a far more refined proposition than is generally allowed. The history of the case and its development comes to life as it is described in the second chapter of his book. Secondly, writers on this subject are often content simply to shake their heads at the rules relating to automatic and total discharge on frustration. Treitel takes care, not only to examine mitigations of those rules in other jurisdictions, but to raise the question whether, unacknowledged, some of those mitigations might operate in practice in English law. His view of this area of the law is a careful, considered and balanced one.

Treitel’s treatment of comparative materials is just as impressive as his treatment of the English law. Reference is made to Australian, Canadian, French, German, Hong Kong, Indian, New Zealand, South African, Swiss and United States law and the comparisons he draws are always very well chosen. For example, writers on this subject often nod approvingly at the American jurisdictions where impracticability is said to be a ground of discharge. Treitel’s work shows this to be a glib response to the American law, which appears to be closer to the English law than many will allow.

If a criticism is to be levelled at this book, it is likely to be that the book is not of a kind that is now fashionable. Although the book is rich in theory, it is clear that Treitel is not keen on drawing out simple “principles” to explain vast areas of the case law. There is a certain impatience with “the familiar judicial technique of deducing a general principle from a series of particular examples” (p. 35). We are also told, perhaps too hastily, that the theoretical basis of the doctrine of frustration has no “practical importance” (p. 583). Those who would wish to summarize the purpose of entire areas of the law in a paragraph will find no comfort in this work. The book might also be seen to be unfashionably insistent upon the certainty and sanctity of contract. These are concepts that ought arguably to have been expounded more fully, given that they are seen as such central goals for the law.

If Treitel offers a feast, then McKendrick offers a type of luncheon smorgasbord. The book is a selection of essays mostly based upon papers presented at a conference and is satisfying as long as you are careful about what you pick and choose. The book has undergone some restructuring since the first edition and is now in six parts, dealing with: (i) an introduction to force majeure and