THE Plantagenets were great ones for building castles and the author is a great one for introducing the reader to more than 100 magnificent fortresses which embody in themselves the turbulence and martial glory of former centuries.

Caerlaverock Castle, just across the border, is as romantic a monument as you could wish for despite the unwelcome attentions of Edward I; Hermitage, again on the Borders, is as bleak as the wild moorland which surrounds it and has a sinister atmosphere to match, and Norham in Northumberland, whose ruins became a favourite subject for the artist Turner, was besieged 13 times and earned the title of "the most dangerous and adventurous place in the country".

And to think some people consider them to be nothing but a heap of old stones.