The role of the Tower as a state prison and place of execution has dominated the literature to an excessive degree. The following brief list represents some of the published accounts believed to represent the history of the site most accurately, though some less-scholarly treatments are included in the general section for the sake of even-handedness.

General

J Bayley, The History and Antiquities of the Tower of London, volume 1 (London, 1821).

J Britton and E W Brayley, Memoirs of the Tower of London: Comprising Historical and Descriptive Accounts of That National Fortress and Palace (1830) (Massachusetts, 2009).

R A Brown and P E Curnow, The Tower of London (London, 1984).

J Charlton (ed), The Tower of London: Its Buildings and Institutions (London, 1978).

H M Colvin, The History of the King’s Works, volumes 1-6 (London, 1963-1982).

E Impey (ed), The White Tower (New Haven & London, 2008).

E Impey and G Parnell, The Tower of London: The Official Illustrated History (London, 2000).

I Lapper and G Parnell, The Tower of London: A 2000 Year History (London, 2000).

G Parnell, The Tower of London (London, 1993).

G Parnell, The Tower of London: Past and Present (Stroud, 1998).

Specific

J Ashbee, 'The Tower of London and the Jewish expulsion of 1290', Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, 55 (2004), 35-37.

A Keay, The Elizabethan Tower of London: The Haiward and Gascoyne Plan of 1597 (London, 2001).

G Parnell, The Royal Menagerie at the Tower of London (Leeds, 1999).

Archaeological/architectural

G T Clark, 'Some Particulars Concerning the Military Architecture of the Tower of London’, in Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Old London (London, 1867), pp 11-189.

G Keevill, The Tower of London Moat: Archaeological Excavations 1995-9 (London, 2004).

S Thurley, 'Royal Lodgings at the Tower of London, 1216-1327', Architectural History, 38 (1995), 36-57.