The National Trust Book of BRITISH CASTLES

NY: British Heritage Press, 1979. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. Quarto, hardcover, near fine in VG blue pictorial dj. Brown and white castle drawings on endpapers; Color and B&W photographs 32 in color & over 170 in black & white. 288 pp. including index."Beginning with the great Iron Age hill forts, Paul Johnson traces each stage of the development of Britain's rich and varied collection of castles: how advances in the techniques of warfare were reflected in increasingly sophisticated methods of defence; the vital part played by the castle in social life-both as an expression of the political and economic conditions of the time or simply as a rather uncomfortable place in which to live; the gradual decay of the castle after its crucial role in the medieval and early modern period; and ending with a chapter on the restoration of several important castles in the nineteenth century, as well as the building of some extraordinary mock ones.