Well written, it helped fill in the gap in my knowledge of the time from the retreat from Moscow to Napolean going to St. Helena. It was written in 1946, so Nicolson was keen on the "reconstruction" of Europe, pointing out numerous times that despite some of the ludicrous situations in the Congress of Vienna, they succeeded for almost 100 years while 1919 was a failure, and the post-WW2 attempts were still ongoing.