The first edition of this text was published in 1992. Since then the law of evidence has undergone many significant changes, for example to the right to silence, the rules on disclosure, corroboration and the treatment of child witnesses. Despite substantial revision of the original text, the themes of the first edition are retained: to what extent is the content of the law of evidence dictated by the adversarial form of trial, and is it worth retaining? Do the rules of evidence operate in the interests of justice? This new edition is designed not only to interest readers already conversant with the law of evidence, but to be used as a text by law teachers interested in a more discursive approach than that employed by traditional evidence textbooks. To this end, it contains more explanatory material than the first edition and should be comprehensible to the novice. The objective is to provide a self-contained but critical account of the manner in which cases are tried in England and Wales. The book should be useful to students of law studying for university and professional examinations.