The second edition of Mr Collier’s short but colourful account of the conflict of laws deserves to be noticed. It remains, in the opinion of many (including this reviewer), the best example of its type (the type being a book for intelligent beginners who need to be told what the law is, as distinct from what it should be). One imagines that it will resonate with those who were taught by Mr Collier; and those who were not will gain for themselves the benefit of a characteristically spirited charge through the undergrowth of the law. The overall standard, of clarity and accuracy, is very high, and such points of disagreement as may exist are more to do with emphasis than with content. In comparison with the first edition there is more (as was inevitable and necessary) on the jurisdictional and European side of the subject, where a couple of quibbles may still remain to be dealt with. It is not altogether true, as may be implied on p. 121, that the recognition of foreign judgments in Canada, on the basis that they were given by a court having a real and substantial connection with the dispute, has been confined to inter-provincial recognition: state courts have been prepared to go beyond all the Supreme Court was asked to do in Morguard Investments Ltd. v. de Savoye (1990) 76 D.L.R. (4th) 256. It would have been helpful to be told whether Mr Collier believes the “unusual”, but otherwise un-evaluated decision in House of Spring Gardens Ltd. v. Waite [1991] 1 Q.B. 241 (p. 133) is unusual but correct, or unusual and suspect. It is disproportionately irritating to be told (p. 123) that a foreign judge who has accepted a bribe from both sides will not be found to have breached the rules of natural justice: there is no place for this ridiculous sort of thing outside the lecture room, even if one is not supposed, in the modern world, to make adverse judgments on foreign legal systems. And in the light of The Tatry (noted [1995] LMCLQ 161, and which was still pending before the Court of Justice when this edition was published), one may wonder whether the bald statement in the first edition, that “The Brussels Convention 1968 on Jurisdiction and the Enforcement of Judgments has little, if any, effect on the Admiralty jurisdiction in rem” (p. 77) has been adequately amended by the substitution of “some” for “little, if any” (p. 90). Elsewhere, the explanation of which law applies to determine the validity of a disputed arbitration or choice of court clause (p. 184) is capable of misleading, for this is not within the Rome Convention ratione materiae, and must therefore surely be governed by the rules of the common law as to choice of law and disputes as to contractual agreement: it is hard to see how the “hope” in footnote 10 can be