By Professor E. R. Hardy Ivamy Published by Butterworth & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., London (1980. xliii and 338 pp., plus 90 pp. Appendices and Index) Hardback £27.50

This work may justifiably be regarded as the “safety net” volume in Butterworths Insurance Library, applying the general principles of insurance law to a miscellaneous collection of individual insurances. The broad headings covered are personal accident insurance, life insurance, industrial assurance, property insurance, liability insurance, guarantee insurance and reinsurance. Under each heading Professor Ivamy discusses the practical idiosyncrasies of each insurance, specific forms of policy, and particular terms commonly found in that class of insurance. On the whole this works well, although the inevitable result is overlap between individual parts of this work inter se and with Professor Ivamy’s basic work “General Principles of Insurance Law”.

In some places the approach of collecting all the cases of a particular type under a specific heading while ignoring the fact that their principle is one of general application gives the reader the impression that artificial distinctions are being drawn, but the layout is eminently suited to the practitioner who wishes to discover the answer to a particular point in a given context. Indeed, given the number of different classes of insurance to receive treatment (the reviewer counted 20), if the practitioner is unable to find some discussion of the specific class of policy with which he is dealing, he may regard himself as most unlucky. Perhaps the one weakness in this respect concerns