About 15 years after the Battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington met the young MP, Lord Mahon, later to become the fifth Earl Stanhope. Stanhope recorded his conversations over a 20-year period with the Iron Duke. In this work, Wellington talks about his military campaigns in India, Spain, Portugal and at Waterloo, about Napoleon and his Marshals, about the British political scene, about Metternich and Talleyrand, Peel and Melbourne, Catholic empancipation, the Indian Empire, about royalty - King George III and Queen Victoria, and King Charles X, and Louis XVII of France.