England may lack the kind of tunnel vision that spends millions on a fast freight network to Dover, but not the conceptual kind that is still found in the law of carriage. England has had a history not only of distinguished navigators but of distinguished lawyers whose careers have also been associated with carriage of goods by sea. In the last century, there were books on the law relating to carriage by rail, with which there was a fascination then; but, for the most part, the fascination, the railways and the books have declined together and, between 1950 and 1980, our law books on carriage have largely been on carriage by sea. A notable exception was Kahn-Freund’s The Law of Carriage by Inland Transport (1965) but, regrettably, in only one edition. Nor should we forget Hill’s Freight Forwarders (1972). Today, there is Yates (ed.), Contracts for the Carriage of Goods, a large loose leaved volume on all kinds of carriage, but in divided sections: sea (the largest section !), inland water (the smallest section!), road, rail, air and, significantly perhaps, multimodal transport and freight forwarding bringing up the rear. By contrast, in a Europe, most of which is internally sans frontières maritimes, people have thought intermodally both in planning their transport and also their books. True, even Rodière, with his team of unnamed assistants, divided land and sea but, nonetheless, propounded concepts of transport rather than categories of transport.

And why not? Whatever the mode of transport, there are comparable problems of documentation, of proof of what was received by the carrier or of what happened after that. Whatever the mode, there is some kind of monetary ceiling on the carrier’s liability related to units of goods. Common problems suggest common solutions and the container is now both a solution and a problem common to all modes of transport. Moreover, whatever the mode, the carrier loses his ceiling, and often other defences too, if he has committed a Really Bad Breach, whether it is called deviation (Hague Rules), wilful misconduct (CMR, CIM and Warsaw Convention) or called nothing in particular but described at length—the corresponding breach under the Hague/Visby and Hamburg Rules for carriage by sea, which is very close to the American view of wilful misconduct.

When it comes to the central liability of the carrier, however, the ecumenical movement comes to a halt in a jam of traditional exceptions (Hague and Hague/Visby Rules) or of special risks (CIM and CMR). Of the latter, one judge (Sir John Megaw), who in his youth had thought nothing of rucking and mauling through the French pack, wearily observed that it is “a long journey which we fear may be long and tedious. But the elaborate wording and the complexity of the articles do not provide a direct or a well-surfaced road to the destination”. Nor would Sir John find light at the end of the Channel tunnel, for with the new trains comes the CIM, of which CMR is a simpler version. Some light, however, comes from Hamburg, as the Hamburg Rules remind us that a liability regime does not have to be expressed in such elaborate terms, resembling, as they do, the rules of the Warsaw Convention rather than the cocktail of clauses, both shaken and stirred, found in the other regimes. Indeed, from the ivory tower of Lancaster as much as Louvain, the persistent observer can see common patterns of liability, for example, presumptions, which are relatively easy to establish and which can then be defeated by proving negligence (Hague, Hague/Visby, and CMR and CIM as regards special risks) or the absence of negligence (Hamburg and Warsaw). Complete synthesis may be neither possible nor desirable but constructive comparison and, perhaps, assimilation are another matter. This is the work of Professor Putzeys.

The book has short sections on the carriage of passengers and their luggage and on charterparties. The book also describes the movement of goods, as seen by the law, from begin