Hard on the heels of the revamped seventeenth edition of Arnould (2008), comes the eighteenth. Gone, it seems, are the days when decades could pass between editions (two, between the fifteenth in 1961 and the sixteenth in 1981): competition from a growing number of other specialised works on marine insurance and an increase in the number of (or maybe just more ready access to) judicial decisions on the topic have seen to that.

The new edition retains the same structure as its predecessor and the editors have even largely managed to consider topics in the same paragraph numbers. As may be expected, the new edition reflects the wide range of recent developments that have or may impact on the law of marine insurance. As a result, the text has now increased by some 150 pages.

The eighteenth edition takes full account of a large number of judicial decisions delivered between mid-2008 and its cut-off date, October 2012. In the case of more important ones—such as those in Garnat Trading and Shipping v Baominh Insurance Corp [2011] EWHC 2578 (Comm); [2011] 1 Lloyd’s Rep 589 on warranties and seaworthiness, The Cendor MOPU [2011] UKSC 5; [2011] 1 Lloyd’s Rep 560 on fortuity, causation and inherent vice and referred to in the Preface at vii as “arguably the most important decision in the law of marine insurance since the Second World War”, The WD Fairway No 2) [2009] EWHC 889 (Admlty); [2009] 2 Lloyd’s Rep 191 on abandonment, and Masefield v Amlin Corporate Member [2011] EWCA Civ 24; [2011] 1 Lloyd’s Rep 630 on total loss on the basis of deprivation by Somali pirates—this has resulted in appropriate additions to the text or a reconsideration of previous expositions.

Other developments, too, are reflected, both statutory (eg, the Rome I Regulation 2009 in ch.5, the Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Act 2010 in ch.8, and the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure