This book is one of the highly successful Butterworths “Handbook” series. As the Preface states: “It is intended to provide busy practitioners and persons working in the banking industry with a useful compilation of those materials to which they are often obliged to make reference.”

The book is divided into five sections—banking statutes, banking statutory instruments, bankers’ clearing house rules, Bank of England notices, and EC legislation on banking. The law is as stated at 1 August 1989. One useful achievement is the collection of an amount of non-statutory material not always readily accessible, e.g., Bank of England notices such as those on “Subordinated Loan Capital” (BSD/1986/2) (March 1986) (see para. 647), “Large Underwriting Exposures” (BSD 1987/1.1) (to be read in conjunction with the large exposures paper) (February 1988) (see para. 653) etc. Again, the inclusion of the major clearing house rules is useful in this connection (see paras. 632–637). The statutes are the up-to-date versions with the source of amendments contained in the notes. The ambit of the book is what one might call “straight banking law” and does not contain extracts from building society or financial services legislation. Within the banking area the selection of statutory materials is wide, containing extracts from such arcane areas as the Merchant Shipping Act 1894 and Mortgaging of Aircraft Order 1972 relating to charges and mortgages over ships and aircraft respectively. International banking is not neglected but concentrates mainly on