Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation

Ten of the best towers in literature

This article is more than 13 years old
John Mullan seeks out the high life

Genesis The Old Testament describes the Tower of Babel, symbol of human presumption. In the days when all men still spoke the same language, "they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth". God punishes them by making them speak different languages.

Two on a Tower by Thomas Hardy Amateur astronomer Swithin St Cleeve watches the night sky from the top of a tower owned by unhappily married Viviette Constantine. She gets in the habit of joining him, and as they gaze at the heavens together, blissfully removed from the world, romance blossoms. But this is Hardy, so when they climb down from the tower, things start going awry . . .

"The Tower" by WB Yeats Yeats lived in a 16th-century tower with his family for several years, and wrote a series of tower poems, including this one, a furious meditation upon old age: "I pace upon the battlements and . . . send imagination forth / Under the day's declining beam, and call / Images and memories / From ruin or from ancient trees, / For I would ask a question of them all." All Irish history seems beneath his gaze, but decrepitude awaits him.

"Rapunzel" by the Brothers Grimm A witch imprisons Rapunzel in a tower which has a window, but no door or stairs. Access is via the girl's long, blond hair, up which the enchantress periodically climbs. A passing prince falls for her and makes the same ascent, but the witch sends him tumbling to be blinded by the thorns below.

"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" by Robert Browning In Browning's verse monologue a melancholy knight tells how he is sent by a "hoary cripple, with malicious eye" on a weary journey across a blasted landscape, scarred by war. At the poem's end he reaches the Tower, destiny of "lost adventurers", and in either hope or despair blows on his slug-horn.

Dark Tower series by Stephen King Set in some alternative America, part medieval, part wild west, King's seven-volume magnum opus was inspired by Browning's poem. It follows the quest of his hero Roland Deschain, member of a latterday order of knights called "gunslingers", towards the tower of the title. It takes many hundreds of pages to get there.

The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien But what are the two towers that give the title to the second volume of The Lord of the Rings? Minas Tirith, site of the trilogy's last battle? Minas Morgul? Or a couple of the other towers on the tower-thick map of Middle Earth: Barad-dûr, Cirith-ungol, or Isengard (where Gandalf is held by Saruman until rescued by an eagle)? Take your pick.

The Black Tower by PD James Its setting inspired by a real folly in Dorset, James's whodunit sends Inspector Adam Dalgliesh to recuperate from a severe illness at an isolated rest home by the sea, in the shadow of the ominous Black Tower. There is a series of mysterious deaths and the Black Tower is set alight with someone in it. No rest for a detective on holiday.

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake Peake's Gormenghast is dominated by the Tower of Flints. "This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow." Bad things will happen in it.

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson David Balfour is sent by nasty uncle Ebenezer up the high tower in the House of Shaws without a candle. The stairs are pitch dark and our hero has to feel his way up them. As he nears the top, a sudden flash of summer lightning reveals that they end in mid-air. JM

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed