If you love castles, this is the book for you. Easy to read and interesting, it covers the basics of castle architecture as well as daily castle life. How were knights knighted? How did you use the bathroom? Where did the lord and lady of the castle sleep? Why do some castles have square towers and others rounded ones? I love this book and will be keeping it on reference for a long time.

This book came as a recommendation to a previous book I had read on a similar topic and when I saw it was based on Chepstow Castle (a place I love and have visited before) I was excited to give this a read.

At first I found this hard to get into and struggled to keep my attention in the first few chapters as it didn’t really draw me in initially. I found it a more a detached non-personal account of life in a medieval castle in comparison with others I have read which make it a little harder to engage in to start with but there was plenty of sound, great information throughout. Some great pictures which I found helped reinforce the descriptions in the text.

I found it more of a reeling of facts and information and from this I found it a bit further removed from the lives of those who lived in the period but it was a very interesting topic and I loved reading about the history of castles and the lives of those in and around them.

I felt a bit out of my depth with all the architectural terms, but the book was, like Life in a Medieval City, very readable and well-written. It first looks at the how and why castles were developed, and then describes the life of the inhabitants therein by the their social station, from the lord and lady to the villeins/serfs. This includes a look at a typical day as well as the castle year, which went by farming cycles - sowing, reaping, harvesting etc. The importance also of the castle as a military asset as well as its decline as such and as a domestic center are also mentioned as well. A fine, illuminating and educational read.

I already read the companion book Life in Medieval City. This is just as fascinating, albeit slightly misnamed.
It mostly talks about the people associated with castles; knights, lords and ladies, trades etc.
It tells less than you would imagine about the actual life in a castle, the structure of castles, their purpose and other salient points.
But no matter, it's still a great look at medieval society.