Anyone sticking their head round the door of a hospital mailroom these days would be forgiven for thinking that the preferred NHS provider is Amazon.com. All kinds of ‘signature on delivery’ items appear on a daily basis – some of them quite big. I had already trained up the receptionist with a mail order car battery, and then, to extend her knowledge and skills framework, a piano – so she was completely unfazed by the arrival of the 6.8 kg, two-volume package that is the New Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry. The book is especially good for descriptive statistical treatments: 2086 pages plus index; 11 sections; 269 articles; 378 authors; 28.5 cm×22.5 cm×10 cm – all covered with an interesting blue lacquer-like finish that peels off alarmingly on quite minimal contact with water (see below).

This is not really a textbook – it is more of a non-alphabetical encyclopaedia with very few pictures. It is certainly comprehensive, ranging from ‘the patient's perspective’, through the many scientific disciplines that inform psychiatry, to practical clinical information about almost any psychiatric disorder you can think of. All the subspecialties are represented, even shamanism and social work. Despite all the space to write in, the authors have still had to be selective, and they have done this skilfully, managing to convey a clear enthusiasm for their subjects. For the second edition, many authors were invited to revise their first edition efforts, and some new material has been added.

It must have been a logistical nightmare to put this together: you cannot but admire the editors' skill in delivering such a fine documentary record of the scope of our discipline around the turn of the century. On this point, it is usual when reviewing textbooks to consider the question of the internet v. print – as the editors do (unsurprisingly plumping for the book) in the preface. The fact is that you could get a lengthy broadband subscription for the same money, and instantly peruse regularly updated, high-quality, peer-reviewed topics (covering a wider range of opinion) in psychiatry and beyond – along with plenty of superior illustrative material. For a companion to psychiatric studies though, I have to say I think the Shorter Oxford Textbook ^{Reference Geleder, Harrison and Cowen1} with internet extension is probably the better foundation.

Feeling guilty about not having the time and energy to read from cover to cover (I would need a job-planning meeting to negotiate that), I decided to field-test the thing. Trainees rarely consulted it, preferring pocket handbooks (like the excellent and sturdily bound, wipe-clean Oxford Handbook of Psychiatry ^{Reference Semoke and Smyth2} ); undergraduates plagiarised instead stuff they could simply cut and paste for their projects; and academic colleagues were either mystified as to why they would ever need a textbook, or were entirely pleased to point out their distinguished contributions to it. I had thought about putting it in the out-patient waiting area so that the clients could evaluate the efforts of their care providers, but (a) they are already using the internet for that; and (b) along with Hello!, it would be considered a hospital-acquired infection contamination risk and fire-hazard (no, really).

The lack of portability is a real issue. In the end, though, that is why I discovered the true value of the book. Tired of ferrying it around in the car as if it were a demanding overweight teenager, I had left my review copy in our country place on the estate, where house guests would, as evenings wore on, increasingly trip over it on the way to the malt whisky collection on the sideboard. They started to flip through it. And then they read whole articles, asked questions, started annoying debates, tried to steal it, and so on. Frankly, non-psychiatrists loved it. The book is clearly accessible, well-written and evidently lends itself to casual, serendipitous, lay reading. Thus, this textbook should not be purchased ‘for the library’ (as is sometimes recommended in a ‘damned with faint praise’ manner in these pages), but is needed altogether more urgently in the lavatory – to replace elegantly one's ageing stack of The Field magazine. Only the moisture resistance of the cover could be improved.