This impressively written and extremely authoritative monograph might appear to lawyers as well as lay persons to be dedicated to the most esoteric and inaccessible of subjects, if one goes by the title alone. Maintenance and champerty, the order in which the twin terms are usually referred, are two ancient medieval principles of the common law dealing with unauthorised support rendered by a non-party to another’s litigation. Maintenance is the more general term, referring to unauthorised support, while champerty is maintenance in exchange for some benefit (usually financial) in return. In medieval times wealthy landowners bought up others’ rights to sue as a way of harassing enemies and, and together with barratry (“habitually raising or inciting disputes in the courts”) and embracery (“the attempt to corrupt, influence, instruct, or induce a jury or jurors to favour one side”), the civil justice system was seriously corrupted.1 The range of the law on maintenance and champerty was extensive enough at one time that the representation of a party to litigation by a lawyer was an infringement of the law. Over time restrictions were relaxed until the Criminal Law Act 1967 abolished the torts and crimes of maintenance and champerty, as