After shopping round to avoid a big, mighty tome listing generals, battles, dates, politicians and treaties, I ended up buying a big, mighty tome listing generals, battles, dates, politicians and treaties. All of which, over 600 pages of quite dense reading, makes for a reading slog and the likelihood of information and having been far from fully and properly absorbed. Still, a worthy book it’s hard to criticise even if it wasn’t the one I wanted and should have looked harder for. Never mind; I’ll know in the future.