Over more than two decades and in four previous editions edited by Robin Jacoby and Catherine Oppenheimer, the book under review has been acknowledged by many to be the definitive textbook of old age psychiatry and has been an inspiration to a succession of specialist trainees in the discipline. Initially published as Psychiatry in the Elderly, its title changed to the Oxford Textbook of Old Age Psychiatry in 2008, when the current pair of editors joined Jacoby and Oppenheimer to prepare the inaugural edition with the new title. Now the baton change has been effected and although both the former editors contribute a chapter each to the current edition, editing responsibilities have been transferred to a younger generation. There is a changing of the guard in the individual chapters too. For several editions running Rob Howard's magisterial chapter on late life schizophrenia and related disorders and Bob Baldwin's detailed overview of late life depression were two of the major reasons to buy the book. Now a team led by Dilip Jeste has taken over the schizophrenia chapter and Alan Thomas supplies the latest review of depressive disorders. Both chapters maintain the very high standards set by their predecessors. All in all there are 63 chapters, with new contributions addressing the ethics of dementia, palliative care, living and dying with dementia, and expanded information on various brain stimulation therapies, capacity and memory services, while most of the old favorites are retained. It is quite a weighty tome these days, but I managed to carry a briefcase containing it, volume one of Charles Moore's biography of Mrs Thatcher, my opera glasses, and a computer around Nottingham for an afternoon without exacerbating the shoulder strain that has been bothering me for weeks, so I think its size will be manageable for most readers.

I would have little confidence in the patient care offered by an old age psychiatrist who had not perused a copy of at least one edition of this book, and there is a lot here for geriatricians and non-psychiatrists providing care to older psychiatric patients too. The Oxford Textbook of Old Age Psychiatry, Second Edition continues to lead the field as a comprehensive, internationally relevant textbook of old age psychiatry and can be recommended virtually without reservation.