How Castles Were Built

One of four in a series on aspects of the history of castles, this title considers castle design and construction in their social, political and military contexts. There is discussion of castles beyond the British Isles and glimpses of some of the sources of the history of fortresses: the medieval Pipe Rolls and Licences to Crenallate. Some of the information will be new to junior school children and it is good to see web sites and videos listed beside books as extra sources. However, the index is poor - no entries for obvious subjects like walls, towers and moat - and there is some padding: the 'Build Your Own Castle' project, with its thick rolls of newspaper, is one I remember from castle books of twenty years ago. The last might well have been replaced by a section on what features to look out for on a visit to a castle - like mason's marks. Sometimes the arrangement of the double page spreads is haphazard, determined more by the need to fit the illustrations in attractively than by the logic of the text.