The product of the 2012 Norman Connections Castles Conference (itself located at the mid-point of the 2010–14 Interreg IVA-funded Norman Connections project), this handsome volume of eighteen research papers constitutes a powerful statement of the ‘new orthodoxy’ in eleventh- and twelfth-century castle studies. It provides a timely moving-on from the position presented in the Reference Liddiard2003 collection, Anglo-Norman Castles, edited by Rob Liddiard – a volume to which several of the contributors to this present collection also made significant contributions and which triggered much of the research now being presented here. In Castles and the Anglo-Norman World, we have a body of research that presents a balanced view of the multiple lines of development, manifold purposes and varied manifestations of the castle, marking a level of maturity in the debate beyond the strident revisionism of the 1990s and early 2000s; there is no ‘battle for Bodiam’ being re-fought in this collection. That is not to say that there is no conflict or even divergence of view between the contributors; the papers on Norwich, Colchester, Caen and the White Tower point to lively and continuing debate.

In a volume containing so much excellent material, it is perhaps somewhat invidious to single out particular contributions, but the scale and range of what is offered in the content forces that upon the reviewer. The two papers (in French) on Falaise, in Normandy, are excellent. Charlotte Lapiche and Benoît Panozzo’s discussion of the 150 years of stabilisation, restoration and re-imagining of the central structural elements of the castle — principally the donjon and Talbot Tower, but also sections of the main circuit and towers — is a fascinating exploration of changing cultural attitudes towards heritage asset management that raises some searching questions about conservation philosophies and the issue of authenticity. For example, the divergent trajectories taken in respect of recent archaeological investigation, structural consolidation and provision for better visitor access and understanding at Falaise and Norwich, both of which experienced major restorative interventions in the later nineteenth century, and the manner in which those interventions have been viewed by later generations, presents a challenge to long-established British conservation methodologies and entrenched assumptions that the British way is, unquestionably, the right way. The second paper, by François Fichet de Clairefontaine, Joseph Mastrolorenzo and Richard Brown, is a superb exposition of standing buildings archaeology and analysis, its forensic examination of the surviving fabric enabling a stratigraphic deconstruction of the building phases, which then enables the complex constructional history of Falaise to be explored sequentially. The new insights on the development of the site obtained through this research have enabled a transformation in its interpretation and presentation to visitors.

Transformative is a term that should be applied, too, to Jon Gregory and Robert Liddiard’s landscape archaeology contribution to the collection. There has been much work in this regard published over the last decade, most notably by Oliver Creighton and Rob Liddiard, but the close examination of the siting of two major East Anglian castles — Castle Rising and Castle Acre — moves beyond exercises in viewshed analysis to provide a glimpse of the mentalities and motives of the builders / occupants of these two buildings and how they wished their castles to be observed by visitors. The hypothesis that they offer moves us far beyond straightforward military exigency and points to a complex series of deliberate choices in which multiple messages are being projected through the siting and composition of the building; the castle and its surrounding landscape are a continuum, and neither can, nor should, be treated as an artefact in isolation.

But it is as artefacts in isolation that most of the castles explored in this collection are presented. Elizabeth Popescu’s examination of Norwich Castle is a significant exception, her detailed discussion of the evolution of the settlement from its Anglo-Saxon origins, the impact of the establishment of the castle and the progressive development of the castle and its urban environs, provides a compelling narrative of interdependence and mutual morphological influences. A similar approach for Colchester would have been welcome, but Peter Berridge’s detailed examination of the textual and iconographic evidence for the pre-seventeenth-century form of the building and the continuing debate over its original height nevertheless represents a significant and very welcome advance in our understanding of this somewhat neglected eleventh-century giant. Marc Morris’s brief examination of the building history and role of the donjon at Rochester is valuable in the nuance that it adds to continuing symbolism/functionalism debates. His memorable vision of the king fumbling his way downstairs at night from his under-provided chamber to use the ‘facilities’ in what has been posited as the archbishop’s suite provides an amusing corrective to current interpretations that try to shoehorn the structural remains into what is known of the building’s complex ownership and management.

Much of the remaining content, however, is focused very closely on particular architectural problems or details at individual sites. Each represents an important advance in understanding of a particular building or a new turn in still-unfolding debates, but their authors rarely look over the parapet to view the wider context of the structures upon which they are centred. Among the introspection of this material, it is refreshing to read Pamela Marshall’s overview of the various functions — practical as well as symbolic — performed by the donjon across the Anglo-Norman world. The perspective she offers truly addresses the questions of living in the twelfth-century cross-Channel empire that David Bates outlines in his foreword to the volume.

As the product of a conference and the papers submitted to it, it is pointless to lament the lack of balancing essays for some of the content. It is, however, striking in a series of studies looking at the phenomenon of the castle in the context of the cross-Channel Norman realm that there are few contributions that offer an integrated and genuinely ‘Anglo-Norman’ approach. Possible points of inspiration, influence and relationship are alluded to, but only Edward Impey and John McNeill’s discussion of the Echiquier at Caens provides an exploration of models upon which its builders drew and the context within which it was erected. Given the repeated references to the significance of Ivry-la-Bataille, for example, and the evolution of the donjon in Normandy, it is disappointing not to be able to read a discussion of that building alongside the explorations of Colchester, Norwich and the White Tower. Similarly, the absence of an English counterpart to François Fichet de Clairefontaine’s excellent review of castle heritage in Lower Normandy, included in the volume, is to be regretted. It is, however, as a unified whole — like the Anglo-Norman realm that was the focus of the project behind the volume — that this collection should be viewed and as which it should be celebrated. While this reviewer might lament some missed opportunities in its content, there can be no denying that this collection is of immense importance in the study of Anglo-Norman castles and sets the new benchmark for international interdisciplinary research in the twenty-first century.