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This first volume (of two) covers the Conservatives' return to office in 1951 and the personalities and politics of Churchill's and Eden's governments, culminating in Macmillan's accession to the premiership in 1957. It records not only Macmillan's political preoccupations, such as the process of European integration, Anglo-American relations, conflict in the Middle East or the problems of the Cold War, but also provides wry pen portraits of many of the leading European and American figures of the period.

Macmillan was an acute observer of events and people not just in his own country or party, but on the wider international and political scene. He describes with ironic amusement the diplomatic confrontations with the Russians, casts a connoisseur's eye over great parliamentary occasions and comments acerbically on the infighting of the Labour Opposition. In the process the diary also reveals aspects of Macmillan's wider activities and inner concerns, his anxieties, his views on his role and what he hoped to achieve, casting light beyond the 'unflappable' exterior onto the character of one of the most enigmatic figures in modern British political history.