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      Two magnificent gatehouses at Caerphilly – one of the largest castles in Britain

       INTRODUCTION: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE MEDIEVAL CASTLE

      I grew up in a landscape marked by violence. We all did. I spent my childhood in Britain where, even before the bombs which fell during the Second World War, hilltop after hilltop and every town in between bore the scars of war. The memories of these older wars have long been fading. It has been centuries since hostile armies criss-crossed the English landscape, since villages were torched, and since desperate men, women and children sought refuge behind strong walls. Nevertheless, the country’s towns, cities and wider landscape were shaped – are still shaped – by a brutal past.

      Family car journeys when I was a boy took us past the jagged outlines of ancient buildings. They were mostly ruins, but even in a dilapidated state, with uneven walls and collapsed towers, they captured the imagination of everyone who saw them, especially children like me. They were castles: a type of fortification so widespread and so iconic that they have come to symbolize an entire period in our history.

      This is not only true of England: thousands of castles remain in every corner of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and beyond. From the mouth of Lough Foyle in the north of Ireland, to the Alborz Mountains of Iran, castles or their ruins still dominate the landscape and our imaginations. Their massive walls have survived the assaults of both the human and natural worlds, from trebuchets to earthquakes. They are a constant reminder to us today of a time when violence, or the threat of it, was the norm.

      As an adult I have continued to be enthralled by these massive skeletons, or ghosts, which stand in our landscape, speaking of very different times. What are they? And what do they tell us? I recently made a television series about some of the greatest surviving castles. I travelled across Europe and the Middle East to walk their battlements, crawl through tunnels, and climb the hills on which they often stand. Built during a period of over two hundred years, from the late twelfth to the early fifteenth centuries, they have helped me to understand how the medieval castle developed during its period of greatest dominance. In different fields of conflict – from the English struggles to subdue the rebellious Welsh to the efforts by Christian kingdoms in Spain to conquer territory held by Muslims; from the Crusades by European knights in the Holy Land to the lesser-known Northern Crusade of the Teutonic Knights in Poland – an arms race took place between the builders of fortifications and the designers of attack weaponry. It oscillated one way then the other, at times evenly poised, until finally it favoured the well-equipped besieging army whose arsenal was too powerful for even the strongest castle. The age of the castle was over; but their influence continued long after in the ways we built. Many of these castles still stand, demanding to be understood.

      Maiden Castle in Dorset, England, is one of Europe’s biggest Iron Age hill forts

      Ira Block / Getty Images

      Hadrian’s

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