I’m sure you all remember Thomas a Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered in the cathedral by T S Eliot. This is the remains of his castle.

It may not look like much now, but if he’d stayed in the Berkhamsted Castle instead of visiting the cathedral he would be alive to this day.

Berkhamsted Castle was built by the Normans, and generally hacked about for a few hundred years until gunpowder made it obsolete, when it became a handy building supply store for the neighborhood.

The one time it saw significant warfare was when some of the English barons (who were mostly Norman French) rebelled against King John (who was not a good man) and invited Prince Louis of France to invade Britain with a view to becoming King in place of John. Berkhamsted was one of several castles besieged by Prince Louis’ army. However, wily King John outwitted the froggy invaders by dying of a surfeit of peaches, and his ten year old son was quickly crowned King Henry III. The rebellious barons, who had got to know and dislike Prince Louis and his followers, decided that a ten year old boy was better ruler than a bunch of continental immigrants, and Prince Louis was duly dispatched back to France.

The rest of Berkhamsted seems to have recovered from the French invasion. It has a very pleasant main street full of shops selling stuff you actually need to buy, rather than stuff you put on a shelf to show what good taste you have. I scored big in the Oxfam bookstore.

Some classic humor there (or for the benefit of my brother who thinks I should use English spelling, classic humour. Sorry, Tony, I long since set my spell checker to American.) There’s a 1930’s Beachcomber first edition, Spike Hughes on cricket, and Ronald Searle fetishizing schoolgirls.

The John Sayer Almshouses have been housing people in need since 1684.

The inscription on the front reads The Guift of John Sayer Esq 1684 so they have their spelling checker set on medieval.

Berkhamsted is the sort of town where steam rollers cruise the main drag looking for Teslas to run over.

Autopilot that, hipster scum.