This is the third edition of Ms Padfield’s text. The structure and content remain largely unchanged but for the addition of a new and final chapter on specific types of insurance. This last chapter provides an overview of the basic features of a wide range of insurance: accident, business interruption, contractors’, legal expense, health, products, professional indemnity, and public liability.

The author’s prime objective is to set out in concise style the essential substantive law as it relates to insurance claims under English law. As such, the work inhabits the terrain (marine insurance not being the focus of the work) somewhere between that of an introductory text and a highly detailed compendium. It is of no surprise that the author is the editor responsible for Atkins Court Forms volume on insurance law: there are clear similarities between the styles of the two works. Indeed, these two texts would sit very happily together on a practitioner’s bookcase as companion guides.

In broad terms the structure of the text is in two natural halves: law pertaining to the claimant, most commonly but not exclusively to the insured (through chapters 2–10), followed by law of specific relevance to the insurer particularly when formulating a defence (chapters 11–14). Around