Shorter Notices
The Annual Register. Edited by Ivison Macadam. (Longman. 42s.)
THE death of Dr. Mortimer Epstein, who had edited the Annual Register, in distinguished succession to its founder, Edmund Burke, since- 1924 presented the publishers of this valuable work with a difficult problem. They have solved it very sagaciously by putting the editorship into commission and entrusting it to the Royal Institute of International Affairs, with Mr. Ivison Macadam, Director-General of the Institute, in comprehensive charge of the whole enterprise. The first issue under the new auspices amply justifies the experiment, and a justified experiment has almost ceased ipso facto to be an experiment. Mr. Macadam and his colleagues on the Advisory Board have got together a strong team of con- tributors. The sections dealing with foreign affairs could present no difficulty to Chatham House, but domestic affairs have hitherto lain outside the Institute's scope. Chief responsibility here seems to have been entrusted to Professor W. N. Medlicott, of University College of the South-West, whose method should in some respects be reconsidered. It is admittedly difficult in a publication of this kind to be both factual and readable, but in a publication planned on this scale detailed descriptions of Parliamentary debates, with frequent citation not only of Front -Bench speakers but of back- benchers, seems out of proportion. Such an inaccuracy, moreover, . as " Professor " Keynes ought not to find a place in these pages. The utility of this kind of " aostract and brief chronicle of the time" depends largely on the efficiency of its index. In that respect the present issue deserves high marks ; it is of the first importance that the standard should be maintained. It is a great pity, incidentally, that the familiar, and hitherto admirable, binding of the Annual Register should, to signalise the new regime, have been changed to one so markedly inferior.
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