Britain, before the Romans came and conquered this remote island, was a feisty territory of brittle tempered Celts. The farther north you perilously ventured, the ruddier the redness of the hair of the clansmen, the bleaker the gaunt scenery and more unfriendly the shivering climate. Most sensibly, the Romans voted to have nothing whatsoever to do with this wilderness and built an impenetrable stone wall intended to keep the vermillion tufted Scots out of elegant England where gentlemen wore trousers instead of skirts and spoke so that anyone could understand the gist of what was being said.
    In time, the Romans grew homesick, so they folded their tents and headed south, whereupon the Scots, Pics and all manner of unsavoury characters descended from the north. They clambered over the impenetrable stone wall into the sophisticated land of gentlemen's clubs and the old school tie (not that ties had yet been invented, but you get the drift). All right thinking citizens of the south agreed that steps should be taken without delay to curb these unwanted and wholly loathsome intrusions. As a result, the Heptarchy was founded. But what, I hear you demand, is that tricky word with a "hept" for seven and "archy" for government? The answer is given as "the seven kingdoms into which England was divided from about the seventh to ninth centuries to defend itself against aggression."
    All of us form alliances for mutual protection when threatened by a powerful aggressor, simply of a "strength in numbers" philosophy, and so it was in the earliest days. But all organisations must have a headquarters where papers can be shuffled and where interminable meetings can be held; various locations were considered but, eventually (and the point of all this at last), Windsor was selected as the perfect place to build a formidable castle that would put the fear of the pagan gods into any would-be invader. So it came to pass that the first Windsor castle was constructed sometime between the seventh and ninth centuries on a natural promontory around which the river Thames makes a horseshoe-shaped diversion. This formed a most effective defensive position that not even the most incorrigibly intrusive Scot could attempt.
    Then along came that pushy Norman, William the Conqueror, who in 1066 had the audacity to invade England and, can you believe it, win! The upstart William's very first act as impostor King of England was to decree that the fortress at Windsor should be greatly improved and made a more formidable bastion. This was the first in a series of redevelopments over the centuries that included the construction of the first stone round tower ordered by Henry III in 1272. Later, in 1344, Edward III virtually demolished it to rebuild a new round tower of massive proportions that has never been threatened. Edward believed that King Arthur's castle, Camelot, had stood upon this spot and he claimed he had hard evidence of this. When he created the most noble order of chivalry, the Order of the Garter, he insisted that the twenty-four knights should meet each year on the very spot where the Knights of the round table had met six hundred years earlier. The good King might have been right about Camelot, but we will never know because Edward's "evidence" did not survive and we are no more certain today of where Arthur's castle might have been.