Writing as an English trained and qualified lawyer, it was interesting to be able to review this book covering Australian law. The primary market for the book is the practising profession, although it is also stated that it should be of interest to estate agents, land agents and law students. Given the detailed analysis of the law contained (and its price), it is neither intended, nor could be used, as a student textbook.

The book is quite different from most English counterparts in terms of its purpose and coverage. It deals only with landlord/tenant law so far as it relates to commercial tenancies (unlike Woodfall and Hill & Redman) and is aimed to be a comprehensive coverage of the law throughout Australia relating to this area (unlike, for example, Murray Ross’s book looking at detailed negotiating and drafting points on commercial leases).

It is also different stylistically in that at times the authors clearly incline towards an academic treatment of the material. The danger of this approach is that it may distort the relative importance of different issues and, insofar as it is aimed at a practitioner audience, might diminish its usefulness. There are, for example, almost 20 pages devoted to the issue of whether or not the doctrine of repudiation is applicable to leases (pp. 244–263), the sort of discussion and developmental theory one would normally expect to see expounded in a different forum. Again, while there are eight pages devoted to rent review (and one would expect more) there is no discussion of the different possible bases for rent review formulae that could be used, for example, indexation, turnover rents and market rent formulae. It is hard to believe that these issues are not equally important in Australia as in the English commercial property market.

Whereas in England and Wales all commercial lettings are controlled by statute (although only in certain ways, such as continuation and renewal, compensation for improvements) only four Australian states have enacted legislation relating to commercial lettings, and this is restricted to retail premises. For this reason, the bulk of the book looks at the common law and only the last four chapters look at the various statutory controls.

Given the focus of the book upon commercial tenancy law, it would have been helpful to have more of a direct commercial focus. There is, for instance, no discussion of management problems with multi-occupied buildings and service charge provisions. Nor is insurance referred to, other than in passing in the context of repairing obligations, or the position of