The recent publication by Mr David Foxton QC of a biography of TE Scrutton makes a belated review of the 125th Anniversary Edition of Scrutton on Charterparties and Bills of Lading, though the book was published in 2011, not inappropriate. This distinguished work of authority has now regained its full standing and indeed leadership in the common law maritime world. Although the frequency with which new editions were required was said by Lord Justice Scrutton himself to be becoming “almost a nuisance to us” (see the Preface to the 10th edition of 1921), frequent editions continued until the Second World War (the longest gap being between the 13th edition of 1931 and the 14th of 1939). There was then a gap of nine years during and after the Second World War (quite differently from what had happened at the time of the First World War, when editions were published in 1914, 1917, 1919 (and 1921)). But after the edition of 1948 things slowed down considerably, with editions in 1955, 1964, 1974 and 1984. Some time after that Mr Stewart Boyd QC and his new team took over for the 19th edition. It has been rightly said that the process of thoroughly revising (or rewriting) a textbook takes several editions. The process can be said to have commenced with Mr Boyd’s 19th edition, which was published in 1996. Although there was another gap of 12 years to the 21st edition of 2008, a further edition three years later with a partly changed team under the editorship of Mr Justice Eder now completes the process of bringing the book back to its standing of earlier years.

The practice of including a photograph of the Lord Justice started in 1984, with one of him emerging from the Royal Courts of Justice; a more informal one of him dealing with court business at a Golf Club (with clerk in attendance) appeared in the 1996 edition, and the present edition, as befits a celebratory edition, contains, in addition to an enlarged biography, four further good pictures, one showing a most benevolent side and another, earlier picture showing him entering the Old Bailey on foot in a top hat to try the “Brides in the Bath” murder case.

The book is, as ever, extremely concise and contains many mines of information for those willing and able to follow up the references. The old quasi-legislative form, of a succinctly formulated Article, followed by fairly extensive Comment and then Illustrations, still to be found in some books, has never been followed in this book. Instead the Articles have been, and still are, fairly substantial, and they are followed by separate Notes, some of a rather miscellaneous nature. Amid modern exposition one still sometimes drops into a Note of rather dated appearance, sometimes going into small microcosms of case law of the nineteenth century (eg, pp 197, 287 (really quite mysterious), 253–255 and 327 (on Allison v Bristol Marine (1876) 1 App Cas 209); and coming into the twentieth century the discussion of frustration cases after the First World War at pp 36–37). These, it may be assumed, remain there because the editors judge them still useful. Some of the longer footnotes of former years, often no doubt preserved because of the standing of those who first