This volume consists of an anthology of six lectures and essays on aspects of international commercial and maritime arbitration. To secure a consistency with the cover title, “international” has to be given a somewhat enlarged and generous meaning so as to include domestic institutions and legal concepts with an international perspective or relevance. There is no predominant theme: the various contributions have a random air. If there is an intended embracing theoretical framework, the reader is left to his own ingenuity to discern it. But no interest or value is necessarily lost because of this. In a peculiar fashion it serves to emphasize the range and variety of the arbitration phenomenon.

This manner of anthology is probably more to the taste of the academician and student than to those with a more practical and forensic interest in arbitration. But the reader of whatever background who is prepared to wade his way through the individual contributions will find the exercise rewarding. What is here provided represents a valuable counterweight to the plethora of uninspired and uninspiring introductory texts on arbitration and the unavoidable succinctness of the more weighty tomes which reach out for absolute comprehensiveness. It is also reassuring to see that it remains possible to obtain a good read at not too great a cost to the pocket. All, however, is not newness and novelty, for the two lectures included in the anthology have appeared in print elsewhere.

The two republished lectures were delivered by the present Master of the Rolls, Lord Donaldson of Lymington, and Mustill, L.J., at University College London in 1983 and 1984 respectively. The Master of the Rolls chose as his title “Commercial Arbitration—1979 and