In a market that is crowded with books on Waterloo, Wellington and Napoleon, Weller has managed the impressive feet of producing a book that takes a novel approach to the battle. Rather than present us with an overview of events, he tells the story of the battle as far as possible from Wellington's point of view, telling us only those things that Wellington knew at any particular point. His aim was to try and get a better understanding of why Wellington made the decisions he did, and what impact he had on the outcome of the battle.

One side-effect of this approach is that we very rarely glimpse Napoleon. His subordinates, who actually directed the repeated attacks on the Allied lines, feature more prominently, and Weller does take the time to examine the reasons for both the attacks themselves and the formations used in each one (while also admitting that in some cases it isn't possible to be entirely sure what happened, despite, or perhaps because of, the large number of memoirs and accounts produced by participants in the fighting).