Late in September 1980, John Burgess arrived in Poland to head up the Australian Embassy in Warsaw. Little did he realise that he would witness major developments leading eventually to the end of communism in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, and dissolution of the Soviet Union. This book tells the story which Ambassador Burgess was able to witness personally at close quarters, from the emergence of the independent trade union, Solidarity, at the Lenin shipyards in Gdansk, until the imposition of martial law in December 1981 and beyond.