The memoirs of Lord William Strang, who joined the British Foreign Service in 1919. He served in a variety of capacities, including those of chief advisor on League of Nations Affairs, Political Advisor to Field Marshal Montgomery in Germany (1945-1947), and finally, until his retirement in 1953, as Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office. He went with Neville Chamberlain to Munich, and took part in the Moscow negotiations in 1939. He sat across the table from Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Molotov, and Vyshinsky, of whom he gives acute and intimate portraits.