This is the first book fully devoted to the tower houses of Ireland, a class of small castle dating to the period from 1350–1650 that provided secure homes to both medieval Gaelic and Anglo-Irish elites across the island. The term tower house was first applied to these buildings by the antiquarian John Henry Parker in an article published in Reference Parker1860, but historical sources indicate that their occupants viewed them simply as castles. The first systematic study of the buildings and their associated Irish Gothic architecture was undertaken by Harold Leask in his classic text Irish castles (Reference Leask1941), and this architectural building type has featured in academic works since that time, most recently in Tadhg O'Keeffe's Medieval Irish buildings 1100–1600 (Reference O'Keeffe2015). There is thus a tradition of research on the form and function of these buildings. McAlister's text, however, is no mere rehearsal of previous work; she has set about exploring how the buildings can provide insight into the society that created them and their place in the Irish medieval landscape.

With no central government, landowners were forced to protect themselves, their families and their belongings in a society where the principal form of warfare was the raid. The tower house with its bawn (a defended farmstead taking its name from the Irish bábhún or ‘cattle enclosure’) was ideally suited to provide this protection. Their proliferation should not, however, be viewed as evidence that Ireland was a land of war—quite the opposite. As McAlister notes, “tower houses […] are visual manifestations of economic confidence among all ethnicities in Ireland” (p. 234). Their construction had to be resourced, and it was successful and productive economic activity that enabled them to proliferate as expressions of conspicuous consumption. Agriculture was the backbone of the economy across the island with surplus arable and pastoral foodstuffs sent to the marketplace. In addition, Ireland was also well integrated into the European mainstream economy and had trade connections with the economic powerhouses of France and Iberia, as well as England. The island's medieval economic position, therefore, rested on agriculture, fishing and its associated tolls, and mercantile activity in towns where urban tower houses provided defensible storage and commercial space. In this society, the construction of a tower house represented an investment for the future and highlighted the status of its occupants. Nor should we consider the tower houses as isolated buildings in the landscape; each formed the centrepoint for a community, with associated ‘soft’ buildings (such as halls and kitchens), and they performed an important role in the organisation of nucleated settlement, often associated with gardens, orchards, villages, churches and mills. Allied to this was the location of the castles on or close to internal waterways, fording points and coastal locations, indicating the important role that they played in water-based communication and transport for their occupants. There is, however, more research that might still be undertaken on tower houses, and the author notes that ecclesiastical involvement in the development and proliferation of this building type (in the form, for example, of priest-residence towers) has received a “lack of detailed consideration” (p. 242) in her work. This may, however, direct interested academics to undertake future research on this worthy subject, and much might be gained through a consideration of fortified church complexes such as Bective Abbey, County Meath, or Kells Priory in County Kilkenny, and the role played by the church as a driver in the development of the tower houses.

McAlister is evidently interested in breaking new ground, and this she has done very well, but for those readers with limited knowledge of the buildings’ form and architecture, an introductory chapter might have been useful. The decision to have a date range for the book that begins in 1300 could also be questioned, especially since McAlister acknowledges in the text that there is general agreement as to the existence of tower houses from the early fifteenth century onwards, but that proof of an earlier origin has been “frustratingly elusive” (p. 233). A safer start date might have been 1350. Neither of these points, however, should take away from the author's overall achievement. To conclude, this is a well-produced and attractive book, and McAlister has demonstrated her ability to write in a clear and accessible fashion, creating a text that is sure to be consulted by anyone engaged in the study of castles in late medieval Ireland.