Rarely can a book costing £200 be recommended with unrestrained enthusiasm as a bargain; but Dicey & Morris is an exceptional book. Its canonical status is attested to by almost every case (and these are many) in which it is cited. In the teeth of some very problematic legal development, it has retained its format of Rule, Commentary and Illustration. The Rules now appear emboldened, but in smaller type; and on closer inspection there have been substantive changes as well.

The tenth (1980) edition of Dicey & Morris was, it now appears, the last of its type. At that time the subject was largely about choice of law as distinct from jurisdiction; the archetypical problem was the Saxonian infant who entered into a contract while on holiday in Ruritania, where he would have been of the age of majority. This characterization is unkind, no doubt, but the “conflict of laws as parlour game” approach has been increasingly swept aside as a strong blast of commercial fresh air has reinvigorated many of the chapters. In particular, the jurisdictional material is substantively excellent, and the new chapter on the general principles of contract is a model of how to deal with extensive legislative reform. Certain parts of the law of property are also vastly improved on their earlier form, a development which was already in train in the eleventh edition. Whether this reflects the involvement of practitioner-scholars in the editorial team is not known, but it is certain that the re-orienting of the book has saved it from what might otherwise have become a gentle decline.

Having said that, there are two general points where a little doubt remains. The first reflects the fact that there are still areas where fresh air may need to blow. Opinions may fairly differ, but the section on the assignment of intangible property does seem to be distinctly thin. True, Art. 12 of the Rome Convention has supplanted the antique and bizarre collection of cases which the common law had thrown up; but there is room for the view that