This book is the first in the Butterworths Professional Dictionary Series, and is aimed at both practitioners and students of insurance law. Its format is to lay out in alphabetical order the most important terms used in connection with general and marine insurance and to provide for each a brief definition, accompanied, where appropriate, by illustrations from the cases or practical examples. It is inevitable, given the size of the book, that its contents are hardly likely to satisfy any but the most superficial of interests in the law of insurance. It would be pedantic for the reviewer to highlight any one entry in the dictionary to illustrate the point, for the overwhelming majority cannot do more than provide a starting-point for further research. It is difficult to see how the dictionary could serve as a reference-work for a student, as is claimed in the preface, when works such as John Birds’ Modern Insurance Law or indeed Professor Ivamy’s own, Insurance Library are available to him. Similarly, a practitioner would immediately turn to any of these or MacGillivray and Parkington for the sort of detail likely to be required.

What, then, is the use of the dictionary? It might well serve as a useful revision aid for a student (who would surely not buy it on that basis), but its main importance is likely to be to the totally uninitiated practitioner who wishes a quick answer to a question of general interest. These uses apart, there would seem to be little point in possessing such a book. This, of course, is not the fault of Professor Ivamy, who has done well to include as much in so few pages; it may well be that the whole series will prove to be of limited value.