‘Windsor Town and Castle’ by Henry Farrar

Published in Windlesora 09 (1990)

© WLHG

Previous general histories of Windsor have been written by those who have lived and worked in the town and grown to love it. They have, in the main, restricted their works to the people, places and happenings in the town.

Henry Farrar, who has already produced books on Hurst, Pontefract and Selby, has looked at Windsor from an outsider’s point of view. As a result this book dwells heavily on the views of visitors. He covers the attitude of many monarchs towards the town as well as the effects of events far away.

An extensive bibliography shows that he has used the diaries of many travellers for whom Windsor was but one town in many. One cannot fail to be sorry for Charles P. Moritz, a ‘literary gentleman of Berlin’, so shabbily treated by the employees at local inns in 1782.

As a result of this global approach to the history of Windsor, many of the important people and events are treated somewhat scantily and others are missing. There are occasions when one’s appetite for a story has been whetted, only to be followed by disappointment as the subject changes.

Every double-page spread of the text contains at least one illustration, and several have four or five. This means of course that many of the pictures are very tiny. It is unfortunate that some of the modern pictures are merely snapshots, and contrast so badly with the superb engravings made several hundred years ago, when the execution would have been so much more difficult.

Mr. Farrar won an award for his desktop publishing technique and design of the book, which he produced himself. Priced at £9.95, as a hardback book it is good value in 1990 and Windsor – Town and Castle is a useful supplement to the works of South and Bond.

Published by Phillimore,1990 (130 pp) for £9.95; ISBN 0 85033 746 1.

Pamela Marson