It sometimes seems to me, with a mixture of admiration and despair, that almost any question one may raise about castles has already been raised, and… - R. Allen Brown

Nowadays, to call anything ‘medieval’ is itself an insult, while to call it ‘feudal’ is ten times more offensive; and if castles are not seen merely as vaguely romantic ruins, they are seen through an idiot haze of bold, bad barons, deep and dismal dungeons, and boiling oil. At best their context is thought to be almost exclusively military, and that too is against them, since in our time one must be against warfare as one used to be against sin.

Brown unashamedly proclaimed himself an "old" historian in terms of shunning trendy topics and approaches. He refused to tolerate nonsense, and he spoke his mind plainly, doubtless stepping on many toes. He must have offended archaeologists with his insistence that archaeology is a branch of history, that an archaeologist should be first a historian and only then an archaeologist

Few subjects in English history have been studied more and for longer than the Norman Conquest, and few have been more bent in the process by biased interpretations based upon unhistorical prejudices.