This well-known practitioners’ book has now reached its 15th edition: the third edition with which Mr Reynolds has been associated, and the first for which he is solely responsible. It is, without doubt, a most accomplished work and one which it is a pleasure to consult.

On grounds of accuracy and lucidity alone, the 15th edition belongs in the first rank of treatises on modern private law. The coverage of recent authorities is exceptional and there are useful references to Commonwealth decisions where these serve to illuminate or to controvert domestic case law. No less interesting are the occasional references to Commonwealth statutes, such as the Australian Insurance (Agents and Brokers) Act 1985 and the New Zealand Insurance Law Reform Act 1977. The reduction of this extensive body of authority to a coherent and systematic exposition is admirably achieved. Practitioners will especially value the editor’s economy and selectivity of presentation, which resists the temptation to descend into elaborate factual analyses of individual cases and does not permit his essential arguments or conclusions to become submerged beneath the weight of material.

Two particular virtues of the current edition call for mention. First, the editor has developed his emphasis upon the modern commercial dimensions of agency, for example, in helpful discussions of distributorship agreements (including references to Hospital Products Ltd. v. U.S. Surgical Corp. (1984) 156 C.L.R. 41) and of title retention. Secondly, the work pursues a strongly critical theme and offers invaluable ideas about the shape of future development. Many of these ideas have been discussed by the editor in periodical literature over the past 10 years, but there is much that is new. The expanded first chapter on the nature of agency is a particularly good example of the editor’s talent for intermarrying argument with analysis. No practitioner seeking argument as well as settled doctrine could be better served than by this edition.

One of the problems of analysing modern agency transactions is their close interrelation with, or proximity to, other areas of civil obligation. A serious work on agency must draw heavily upon aspects of tort law, equitable doctrine, restitution, general contract law and special contracts (such as sale of goods), and a host of other sources. This breadth of reference is excellently managed in Bowstead and the result is a treatise which, far from merely expounding its subject in isolation, succeeds in demonstrating its interrelation with, and place among, other classes of civil relation.

There are, of course, areas which one might wish to see developed, or references which one might wish to see included. Almost all of these stand at the periphery of the subject; and the fact that they are proposed indicates the scope and centrality of the work. The recent line of cases on “domestic” or family agency relationships in the procuring of credit transactions (Avon Finance Ltd. v. Bridger [1985] 2 All E.R. 281; Kings North Trust Ltd. v. Bell [1986] 1 W.L.R. 119; Coldunell Ltd. v. Gallon [1986] Q.B. 1184, pet. diss. [1986] 1 W.L.R. 994) will