This latest edition of the General Principles, the groundwork of the Butterworths Insurance Library, is well laid out, in the main comprehensive and has extensive citation of authority but it does not stand comparison with the recently published eighth edition of MacGillvray and Parkington on Insurance Law.

To start at the end; it is useful and generous to have included in the volume nearly 400 pages of statutes and statutory instruments. It is also thankful that the appendices are fully indexed, so that you can dig out the relevant parts of the statutory instruments. A notable omission, however, is the Financial services Act 1986, which is also not considered in the text and, as a result, part of Chapter 6, on the Insurance Companies Act 1982, is out of date.

A general criticism of the main body of the work is that the footnotes are too long and the text is too short. This might seem a carping criticism of a text which, excluding the statutes, is already 600 pages long. The consequences can, however, be at times alarming. Taking a central principle of non-disclosure and the circumstances in which it can be said that an insurer has waived non-disclosure, the test is simply too short. There is no definition or statement of the test of what amounts to waiver but a summary of the cases by way of footnote, the footnote being nearly four times as long as the text. The trouble with this, for the average practitioner, is that a great deal of further looking up would be required in order to distil a general principle. The editors of MacGillvray and Parkington do not fall into this trap. Again, looking at the analysis both of a broker’s duty of care and the liability of a broker for failure to exercise reasonable skill and care (Chapter 50B), the statements of principle are too short and the reader is left to cope with nearly three pages of footnotes in respect of the standard of skill and care. The trouble with this approach is that in some circumstances the reader is left high and dry without a clear statement of principle and in others the principle is stated too shortly without the proper qualification which emerges from the cases. It is very difficult to get a proper balance but again one feels that the editors of MacGillvray and Parkington are nearer to striking that balance by discussing leading cases in the text and shortening footnotes where possible to simple citation and references.

Two more general criticisms. First, as a general work there should be cross references where appropriate, to specialist works on agency, professional negligence, arbitration, reinsurance, etc. It is fair to say that the standard text on the conflict of laws is referred to twice in the relevant chapter. This is, however, the exception rather than the rule. Secondly, a separate chapter on reinsurance might be considered for the next edition.