If the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements should ever come into effect in a way which impinges on the English legal order, Professor Hartley will be the person to go to for an explanation of what it was intended to say, mean and do. He is jointly responsible for the Report which accompanied the Convention and, if and in so far as the European Union decides to legislate the terms of the Convention into law, the Report or this book will be the first secondary resource. There again, if this does not happen—and the absence of any sign of movement makes it hard to guess what is or is not going on—the Convention will join the long list of interesting instruments which was redundant before it ever had a job.

Professor Hartley's book takes the Brussels I Regulation, in its current and recast versions, and the Hague Convention, and seeks to provide a point-by-point explanation of when, where and what each does. He does so in a clear and lucid style which will be instantly and happily familiar to readers. He deals with the tedious bits first: the question of which territories each applies in is fun, albeit that it is pretty marginal to everyday commercial practice (the existence of the occasional case involving Tahiti, or Gibraltar, means that these deserve a mention; otherwise the status of these instruments in the scatter of peripheral territories is a detail most of us will never need). The information on the date as to which each applies is important; but, at least in the context of the Hague Convention, its practical operative date will be determined as much by the legislation which incorporates it into the European legal order as it will by Art.16 of the Convention itself. The “conflict of instruments” chapter is especially valuable, even though it does not make for easy reading or pithy summary.

Otherwise, the book is a painstaking walk through the international statutory materials. Its organisation is both straightforward and complex, for it seeks to run three discussions—Brussels, recast Brussels, Hague—in parallel. Its use of headings, and several concurrent numbering systems (surely inflicted on Professor Hartley by someone else), will be a problem for those who prefer their text in prose, but one needs to look past the bitty organisation to gain a sense of how these instruments, two of which are very important, work.

The great virtue of the book is that it seeks to focus on the questions which will be answered by an application of the wording used in these international instruments. Some may consider that it is a pity that Professor Hartley did not also seek to examine the closely associated questions which may be—will be—answered by an application of other legal principles. A view of first impression gives the game away: the entire Table of Cases is five pages long. The Table of Cases in the European Court is three-and-a-bit pages long. That leaves little room for cases decided by national courts; and it illustrates the degree to which the concern of the text is not with the kinds of dispute and decision that are the routine and daily business of the Commercial Court.

For example, on the question of who may be held to be bound by or to an agreement which otherwise satisfies the requirements of Art.23 of the Brussels I Regulation, there is reference to the