Confinement in the Tower of London has been the lot of more people than can now be numbered. Many of its prisoners are beyond remembrance. Their very names have been forgotten. Most of those whom history commemorates are drawn from the long roll of kings and queens, statesmen and ecclesiastics committed to its towers, which only too often they exchanged for the still narrower straitness of the grave. This booklet offers a brief but engaging look at some of the more memorable prisoners, from the rapacious prelate Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham and minister of William II, who was imprisoned in 1100 (and later escaped), to Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler’s deputy during World War II. Hess was imprisoned from May of 1941 until 6 October 1945, when "in the cells of Nuremberg he rejoined such of his colleagues as had survived the war and were being tried for their lives by their conquerors."
