Author pic : Dan Jones. Pic by Joe Magowan
Today in the nuclear age, the model of a castle as a military asset stands… but instead of battlements and bastions its gone subterranean with warrens of tunnels hidden as far below the earth’s surface as technology allows. Castles typically are seen as stately homes, ceremonial palaces, museums which drive tourists to visit Viking ring forts, Middle-Ages forts from the days of chivalry and the Crusades to Gothic pleasure palaces and nineteenth century artillery outposts.
Their military function is now obsolete. However, state-of-the-art fortresses that do exist on earth’s surface are typically navel bases designed to service aircraft carriers and submarines. The concept of the fortress is used as an analogy in the current war between Russia and Ukraine, where the latter has developed a ‘sky fortress’ acoustic detection system, listening in for the signature sound of missiles and drones, sending data to mobile anti- aircraft firing teams. Every major country in the world maintains nuclear bunkers, secretive, inaccessible to the public and capable of activating atomic weapons, while being resistant to payload detonated above them.
For the ‘fortunate’ rest of us, ‘doom prepping’ is the only option to escape social catastrophe or avoid human control, by deploying fortified compounds. If you’re thinking glamping bunkers on a threadbare budget, albeit under a concrete and steel structure that can protect you from anything outside, you’d better get a tin-foil hat, for sure. The physical form of a castle has been evolving since the last Ice Age, but the dream persists. Bestselling historian Dan Jones leads the reader on an epic journey across centuries and continents, telling a unique story of power, politics and survival, revealing the shifting tides of warfare, the rise & fall of empires and the resilience of people under siege while the age of New Ideas flourished.
The author blends rich storytelling, extensive research with beautiful original illustrations in this epic story of how humans built fortifications that captured our imagination. His flair and scholarly output shows how endurance, defiance and imagination, carved the landscape we have inherited.
Each chapter of the book focuses on a particular age of castle-building, selects human stories from that time, then sets these stories in their ancient and modern context. In a manner, it’s like a conversation between the past and present detailing a personal tour of castles that Dan Jones has encountered.
In World War 1 , the Maginot Line proved that the men manning it were victims not of poorly built fortifications, but for a war prosecuted at a different speed, in different places and by different means than war planners in France had imagined. CASTLES takes us to fortified cities of the early Islamic world , Edinburgh Castle, Chateau Gailland in France, Azuchi Castle in Japan, but its not intended to be an encyclopaedic work, its aim is not to catalogue every castle that ever existed, nor cover every region where castles have been built. It’s more thoughtful than that. The purpose of summarising the contents of this book is really about medieval warfare in general in which you can learn a great deal about medieval societies by examining the armies it deployed — one will mirror the other. This is how the author does the same for castles.
Castles reflect their builders and their wider environment. The Great walls Of China tell us about the emperors and leaders who ordered and arranged their construction. For me, the example from the book that stands out predominately in my mind is that of Ludwig II of Bavaria whose remarkable spate of castle building in the second half of the nineteenth century are inhabited by the romantic ideals of the Middle-Ages mixed with a more than large dose of Wagnerism, to construct some fantastical strongholds straight out of legends and folklore. Notably the most famous fortress of Neuschwanstein stands today as living proof that castles have a prominent role in today’s world. One of the book’s greatest strength is the incredible amount of detail ploughed into its case studies, something that’s common in many Dan Jones’ books and CASTLES is no exception.
Jones talks about Cadbury Hillfort in Somerset UK, not about its origins and early history but how it inspired later writers, intellectuals and tourism, many believing it was Camelot. Obviously castles don’t cease to exist because they no longer perform their original purpose, but inspire, appal, or enrage later generations as community’s views and values change over time. To some extent, castles serve as society’s wind vane and Jones is especially effective at examining their impact over the longer term.
What comes across through this book is the versatility of castles and how they speak to so many other registers of life, some of them unexpected. Taken overall, I found this book a remarkable, thought-provoking, wide-ranging work and a page-turner, devoured in a handful of sittings.
Dan Jones : Castles : A Fortified History Of The World will be published on the 3rd November 2026
