The essential companion to discover the styles, architecture, form, significance and historical impact of castles from all over the world. How to Read Castles is a travel-size primer that takes a strictly visual approach to castle architecture, building up your vocabulary of castle types, styles and materials, and showing you how these aspects can be recognised across architectural features from the floor-plan and moat, to the towers and crenulations. Focusing on the 10th-16th century period, and crusading across the globe from a Welsh motte-and-bailey to a Japanese hirajiro, this is both an architectural reference and a visitor's guide showing you how to read the stories embedded in every castle's stones. Castles once dominated the landscape as seats of power and symbols of wealth and status, providing a means of control over borders, passes, routes and rivers. Armed with this book you will be able to unpick their histories and see how they shaped the land around them. From rugged coastline defences to soaring mountain fortresses, this book takes you on an international journey of discovery, exploring some of the most inspiring and impressive architecture history has ever seen.

Natalia Vlasenko (PhD) is a well-known lecturer at Moscow State University of Culture and Arts. She is passionate about the education of students and teaching them how to discuss their own culture in the English language. Empowering students to spread information about the Russian culture, in English, has gained her an impressive reputation. This book gives an overview of various aspects of Russian culture as well as insight into prominent figures and will be of interest to all students, especially those studying the Arts.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

After many visits to Wales to photograph some of the castles I decided to produce this book, I selected 20 castles, not the biggest or grandest, to represent the spirit of these old structures. Steve Howe, a local writer, researched and wrote a potted history of each castle, I think between us we have created not only a picture book but also a history book.