MARINE INSURANCE: A LEGAL HISTORY. Robert Merkin, QC, Professor of Law, Reading University and School of International Law, Chinese University of Politics and Law; Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Exeter, UK; Special Counsel, Duncan Cotterill, New Zealand. Edward Elgar Publishing Inc, Northampton, Massachusetts. (2021) cxlvi + 857 pp. ISBN 978-1-78811-674-9 (cased); ISBN 978-1-78811-674-6 (eBook). Hardback £400.

It is said that one cannot judge a book by its cover. Perhaps, for a law book, one can make at least a preliminary judgment by looking at its use of primary sources. The Tables of Cases (there are three) in Robert Merkin’s remarkable new history of marine insurance occupy the first 94 pages of a book weighing in at just over 1,000 pages; the Tables of Legislation (there are two) occupy the next 32 pages. In total, the book’s 17 chapters contain 7,585 footnotes. Without even looking at the book’s contents, then, one can surely judge this to be an astoundingly detailed and comprehensive piece of work.

Professor Merkin’s Preface states that his original intention was to compare the old cases about marine insurance with the 1906 legislation to analyse to what extent the Marine Insurance Act 1906 was an accurate statement of the law as it then stood, and to what extent it