The Tower of London in the History of England

by A.L. Rowse

Hardcover; Very Good; Dust Jacket - Very Good; G.P.Putnam First Edition. Hardcover,Very Good maroon cloth covered boards with gilt lettering & top cover design. Minor edge rubbing. DJ is Very Good with minor edge rubbing. 280 pages including index. B&W and full color illustrations and charts.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Alfred Leslie Rowse, CH FBA, known professionally as A. L. Rowse and to his friends and family as Leslie, was a prolific Cornish historian. He is perhaps best known for his poetry about Cornwall and his work on Elizabethan England. He was also a Shakespearean scholar and biographer. He developed a widespread reputation for irascibility and intellectual arrogance.

One of Rowse's great enthusiasms was collecting books, and he owned many first editions, many of them bearing his acerbic annotations. For example, his copy of the January 1924 edition of The Adelphi magazine edited by John Middleton Murry bears a pencilled note after Murry's poem In Memory of Katherine Mansfield: 'Sentimental gush on the part of JMM. And a bad poem. A.L.R.'

Upon his death in 1997 he bequeathed his book collection to the University of Exeter, and his personal archive of manuscripts, diaries, and correspondence. In 1998 the University Librarian selected about sixty books from Rowse’s own working library and a complete set of his published books. The Royal Institution of Cornwall selected some of the remaining books, and the rest were sold to dealers.

Reviews

[Maddie Moore · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing was so dense 😭 I read it bc we scheduled a very expensive tour of the tower - the blue badge tour guide was soooo worth it. He gave probably 70% of the info in this book during our 2 hr tour but in fun ways. So basically the tour was worth the money bc I got more out of it than this boring book 😌

[Claire Biggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

In interesting look at the tower through the ages, would have been more interesting to have more earlier history instead of a huge chunk written about the Tudor era

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was hoping for a history of the architecture and buildings. Instead got a list of people held in the Tower over the centuries, with only slight context as to why they were there. The writing was oddly florid and highly biased, with out-of-date colloquialisms and lots of assumptions about the reader's existing knowledge.