Tower: An Epic History of the Tower of London

Built by William the Conqueror beginning in 1078 as a super-castle, the Tower of London has been variously the kingdom’s primary palace, a prison and execution site, a zoo, the Royal Mint, and home to the crown jewels. Henry III expanded and transformed the Tower into an opulent palace, and by the end of Edward I’s reign in 1307, it had assumed today’s outlines, with 20 towers and a 100-foot-wide moat. At the Tower, captured foreign kings were pampered prisoners; Richard II’s mother was nearly raped by a drunken army of rebellious peasants; and candidate knights in Henry IV’s new Order of the Bath took actual baths in the Tower as part of the ceremonies. Edward IV gorged on food and mistresses while his predecessor and prisoner, Henry VI, lived a harsh existence only a couple of walls away. The Tower was the site of the execution of two wives of Henry VIII and Mary Tudor’s nemesis, Jane Grey,; and briefly the prison of Nazi chief Rudolf Hess. Jones (Rupert Brooke) provides more than the history of an famous tourist site, creating a marvelous, authoritative, and entertaining history of England, tightly focused and richly detailed. 8 pages of b&w photos, 1 map. Agent: Charlie Viney, the Viney Agency (U.K.). (Oct.)