Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lovely photographs, intelligent text, 15 Mar 2004
By A Customer
I expect most people will buy this little book for its excellent photographs, interiors as well as the usual exterior shots, of Scottish castles. Nonetheless, I can recommend it for the text too, a mix of a little architecture and rather more general and genealogical history, aimed firmly at the layman. However, I would also suggest that the specialist architectural buff doesn't overlook this little gem because, rather than concentrating solely on the usual parade of great houses easily accessible to the public, from Drumlanrig and Floors in the south, via Blair and Glamis, all the way up to Durnrobin in the north, within its covers you'll find others very definitely off the beaten track, and in many cases totally inaccessible to the general public. If you want to 'see inside' Craufurdland or Bemersyde, Ardblair, Murthly or Pitcaple, here's your chance!
Definitely the best of the bunch of these illustrated books on Scotland's castles.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
More than your average picture book on Scotland's castles, 8 Jun 2003
By A Customer
Amidst the plethora of glossy, coffee table tomes following the same rather predictable trail around Scotland’s great castles (Blair, Glamis, Dunrobin and the rest), Hugh Cantlie’s little book comes as a real breath of fresh air. Yes, some of the ‘usual suspects’ are there, but so too are such little-known castles as Foulis in Easter Ross, Pitcaple in Aberdeenshire, Cortachy in Angus or Murthly, Perthshire, buildings very rarely, if ever, accessible to the general public. Normally, one would have to content oneself with, at best, a walk around the exterior on those rare occasions when gardens may be opened for charity, but Mr Cantlie has allowed us a delightful glimpse inside what are still in most cases, as the title makes clear, the ancestral homes of the families which built them.The geographical coverage is wide, from Dunvegan on the Isle of Skye down to Bemersyde and Ferniehirst in the Borders, the colour illustrations well chosen and ‘appetite-whetting’ (though don’t expect anything too extravagant in a book of only 10”x8”) and the text eminently readable, although for the architectural enthusiast, it may lean too far towards the history of the castles and the genealogy of the families which live in them rather than the architecture itself. However, even for this group, this little book would still be a very good buy - the modern photographs can add greatly to more detailed architectural descriptions contained in, for example, the works of McGibbon and Ross. All in all, Ancestral Castles of Scotland is highly recommended for anyone, specialist or layman, wanting to discover more about some of Scotland’s less famous architectural treasures.
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