This major new work represents the second stage in the evolution of the thinking of the author, Professor Macleod, the first thoughts being his book Sale and Hire Purchase (Butterworths, 1971). As he states in his Preface, “The underlying purpose of this book is to expound the law relating to the supply of goods in a context which is readily understandable to legal practitioners and law students not already conversant with that area of the law.” In some respects the title is misleading, in that the book covers the whole range of the domestic supply of chattels, including sale, hire-purchase, lease, bailment, etc., as well as contracts between domestic businessmen and related financing arrangements such as block discounting, factoring and the legal concepts of assignment and agency involved. Export trade is not covered. The use of the word “context” is again controversial in the sense that the book is not in the mould of the Weidenfeld & Nicholson’s Law in Context series (e.g., Cranston’s Consumers and the Law), with extensive quotation from non-legal sources, or like Goode’s Commerical Law, with extensive reproduction of the legal instruments used and discussion of the business background to these. Rather, the book is an encyclopedic presentation of all the legal aspects of the supply of goods—from advertising through to payment and use. It deals not only with the contracts of supply, but methods of financing, methods of payments, regulation of credit, manufacturers’ liability for defective products and regulatory consumer protection legislation such as the trade descriptions regime. The book is set out in encyclopedia form—paragraphs followed by footnotes at the end of each paragraph. It in effect combines a sale of goods book, a consumer credit book and a general commercial law book. Paradoxically, it may be so extensive that it might not be appropriate for many courses currently being taught—in modern law faculties, with their split between consumer protection courses and business or commercial law courses; the book perhaps crosses too many boundaries and students may find it a little too intimidating. It will, however, be of great value to the legal practitioner and might well form the basis of a very useful domestic sales encyclopedia.

Reflecting its fairly long gestation period, the work is voluminous in detail and most cases, statutes and reviews and other relevant references in the area are either referred to in the text or footnotes. Certainly most types of question likely to be posed will be asked in this book.

A major irritant however is the author’s frequent posing of questions, usually in a footnote, without any attempt to assay an answer. A typical example is in para. 4.16, discussing the extent of the concept of “services” in the Trade Descriptions Act 1968, s. 14. After giving instances in the text, a reference is made to footnote 4: “MFI Warehouses Ltd. v. Nattrass (set out post, para. 4.17). Does it extend to statements of adherence to Codes of Practice (ante, para. 3.11)?” While a student text should certainly pose challenging questions, I feel it is overdone here and on some of these posers we should hear what the author’s views are on potential answers or solutions to the problems posed.

Inevitably in such a wide-ranging tome, covering both contractual, tortious, criminal, public law as well as self-regulatory controls (such as the British Code of Advertising Practice administered by the Advertising Standards Authority and the Committee of Advertising Practice), even in eight hundred plus pages the depth allocated to topics must vary and there has to be considerable cross-referencing.

A welcome discussion is matters relating to personal property, including issues relating to conversion, which are rarely discussed these days but form the basis of actions to recover wrongfully disposed of chattels as where the hirer sells goods held on hire-purchase before they have been fully paid for. Another reflection on the exhaustive treatment of the author is his dealing with matters which are simply taken for granted or just passed over in other texts