This is an excellent and very readable biography of the Hitler-era German Foreign Minister, written by a biographer who knows a good deal of the period through his work on the Windsors and their connections to the Nazi regime. The book does not pretend to be a full birth to grave scholarly biography but is fully researched from primary sources and gives a very full account of Ribbentrop's ascent to his post through various diplomatic postings (and disasters), suitably laced with humour. It helps in reading the book to already have a fairly good grasp of the main characters of Hitler's court and the progess of the Second World War and the period leading up to it. The story of Ribbentrop's appearance at Nuremburg and his execution makes a sombre coda to this rather woeful tale of a life of a very ordinary man thrust into an extraordinary position. Bloch writes with sympathy and humanity but with no disguising the horrors at the heart of the regime. ( )