It is something of a cliché to start a review with the sentence 'It is something of a cliché'. It is also a cliché to say a picture is worth a thousand words, although many coffee table books just say 'duh' a 1000 times. Stan Beckensall book is a collection of captioned, well reproduced, photographs. A handful of castles covered in nearly 200 pages means something over 70 photographs for each castle many pointing out fine detail saying a great deal about the sites.
Reading these photographs requires knowledge that the captions do not always provide, so Coastal Castles is a useful supplement to other texts with more full histories.