Although the title of this book refers to insurance law, most of the text of the book is about insurance contract law; the main exception is Chapter 6, which contains 76 pages concerning the regulation of insurance companies. The title is not misleading, however, as there is a large appendix of statutes and statutory instruments, most of which are concerned with the regulation of insurance companies or insurance brokers; and this is a well-established book, well known to most of those likely to buy it or to use it. The book is well known not only in the United Kingdom but is often cited by judges in countries of the Commonwealth. Any book that reaches a sixth edition and reaches parts of the world that other such books do not reach merits respect. So, it is in a spirit of both due respect and due disrespect that this review is written.

The book is not for the student but for the practitioner. One of the roles of such a book is to distill and present a mass of information to a reader who is too busy to assimilate it himself and who wants to know fairly quickly where he is in the vast legal landscape of the 1990s, according to familiar landmarks and points of reference. The respectful view is that Ivamy’s book does just this—now as it has before in earlier editions. The law is laid out in the expected place and the strands of law are arranged with a clean and categorical clarity that comforts the reader. The disrespectful view, however, is that the landscape is much larger than before and that it now extends, for example, not only to Brussels and its directives but to Rome and rules about the conflict of laws. This is one part of the legal world that Ivamy does reach but does not sufficiently explore. Moreover, the clarity and the comfort come from sweeping some of the difficult and messy bits under the carpet.

Indeed, this work has the questionable luxury of two carpets. One is the line between text and footnotes. No reader can have failed to notice that there is much more under this carpet than above it. True, the reader can easily look beneath but then there is a second carpet, an invisible carpet, a carpet of silence. For example, it is remarkable that a book of this kind, published at the end of 1993, could pass with barely a comment on CTI v. Oceanus [1984] 1 Lloyd’s Rep. 476 (C.A.) and Pan Atlantic v. Pine Top [1989] 1 Lloyd’s Rep. 568 (C.A.), and with barely a hint that anything had been cooking in the Court of Appeal to be put subsequently before the House of Lords: [1994] 3 W.L.R. 677; noted [1994] LMCLQ 473. The very real clarity of the work is achieved at the expense of the discussion of issues that some readers might not like but some might nonetheless expect of a book of this kind.

Might not many readers expect a leading textbook, as one of its central roles, to chart not only where the courts have been but where, it might appear, the courts are going? True, new students get too excited about new cases. As with the last headache or the next hill, it is easy to get too excited about things of the moment, and to lose perspective. Perhaps a more detached view is appropriate for a senior statesman running to his 6th edition. But it was always likely that Pan Atlantic would be a milestone rather than a molehill and now we know that it is. So, is it the role of the writer to analyse and abstract from the cases to a degree that is not just a record of the past but a projection of the future? Or is it perhaps with a wisdom that comes with the years that Professor Ivamy looks back rather than forward?