2.5 stars
First Sentence: They had been fighting all day, and sheer exhaustion was sapping their strength.
Thoughts: Brother, can you spare me an outline? This book had some interesting history in it, but it was badly organized and in desperate need of more illustrations. Specifically, illustrations showing the plan of the Tower of London through the ages. Or even the current layout of the Tower, I’m not picky. I’ve never been there and I don’t know where all the things are Jones kept mentioning. There were illustrations, true, but they were only of the people who were held in the Tower. Fortunately Wikipedia is a thing that exists and there is a layout of the Tower there.
The first chapter covers the building of the Tower by William the Conqueror. This is rather dull unless you’re into construction and/or architecture. Then we go visit the Tower Menagerie, the main attraction until a proper zoo was built in the nineteenth century and all the animals were moved out. Fun Fact: James I/VI used to go down to the menagerie and make the animals fight each other to the death. That is why he was known as James the Right Bastard. (Not a fact.)
The second half of this chapter talks about the Royal Mint which used to be in the outer walls of the Tower. (See what I mean about needing an outline for this book? Just because they start with the same letter doesn’t mean that these two subjects go together.) I liked this part because Jones talked about how coins were made back in the days of hand-smithing and the dangers that were inherent in that system. He also goes into the economics of England up until the late seventeenth century when Isaac Newton was made Warden of the Royal Mint. Newton took one look at the mess he was given and immediately began using logic to solve the problems. He instituted the Recoining of 1696 where he recalled all the money currently in circulation and issued new coins that were designed to make counterfeiting more difficult. He also personally went after the most famous counterfeiter of his day and took him out of circulation. (Ha!)
From there we fall into the greatest trap of English history: The Recital of the Kings and Queens of the Realm. This part actually does make sense—kind of—because up until Tudor times, the Tower was one of the royal palaces. Along with being the royal prison, especially during the Wars of the Roses when King Henry VI himself was imprisoned there. And murdered, just like the Princes in the Tower and by the same person. Richard III really wasn’t a nice person at all, no matter what his sympathizers say.
And then come the Tudors who gave the Tower its dark reputation. Henry VIII was the first to use it as the favored torture/execution spot for anyone who he didn’t like, and his children kept up the tradition. This is why the Tower is haunted as all get-out. Jones adds an afterword where he tries to scoff at all the stories of ghosts in the Tower, but really, folks, you can’t murder that many people in the same place without having some kind of psychic residue.
After the Tudors, Jones embarks on a Recitation of the Most Famous Prisoners, mainly Sir Walter Ralegh. (I thought it was Raleigh, like the state capital? Or has that been changed across the pond?) After a chapter on famous escapes, the book just kind of peters out.
As an overview of the history of the Tower of London, Tower is okay I guess. I would prefer something less scattershot that had an actual point to it, but we can’t always get what we want in this fallen world. At the very least, a freaking MAP OF THE PLACE would have been most helpful and I blame everyone involved with this book’s creation for not including that.
The Eclectic Reviewer 
