This book follows upon the heels of Kitchen’s earlier work “Labour Law and Off-Shore Oil” also from Croom Helm. It would seem to complete the successful publication of his Ph.D. thesis on the employment of those who work at sea. For those who have seen the earlier book, this is a similar type of exercise—a detailed analysis of the operation of labour law in a particular sphere. Also it is very much an interdisciplinary study; inevitably it contains a good deal of both private and public international law, and it is difficult not to be impressed by Dr Kitchen’s handling of wide-ranging legal materials.

However, the book is still primarily a study of labour law. Kitchen argues in his introduction that labour law fails to cope with categories of persons who do not fit “the normal employment situation” (whatever that may be). Thus, he claims, particular studies such as his own are necessary lest the law becomes removed from reality, and lest complete understanding is abandoned in favour of the appreciation of the less awkward categories of employment. This may not be readily accepted by the labour lawyer who would argue that there are few law subjects more in touch with reality, and who will not have considered writing an “employment law for postmen” on the basis that the limitations upon their right to strike, imposed by the