Sunday Times top-ten bestselling author Graham Robb turns his attention on his homeland for the first time in this beautifully-written and ground-breaking new book.
Section - i: List of Illustrations Section - ii: List of Figures Section - iii: A Guide to Pronunciation Unit - 1: PART ONE Chapter - 1: Hidden Places Chapter - 2: Outpost Chapter - 3: Panic Button Chapter - 4: The True and Ancient Border Chapter - 5: ‘The Sewer of Abandoned Men’ Chapter - 6: Mouldywarp Chapter - 7: Beachcombing Unit - 2: PART TWO Chapter - 8: Blind Roads Chapter - 9: Harrowed Chapter - 10: ‘Loveable Custumis’ Chapter - 11: Accelerated Transhumance Chapter - 12: Skurrlywarble Chapter - 13: Exploratores Chapter - 14: Windy Edge Chapter - 15: ‘In Tymis Bigane’ Unit - 3: PART THREE Chapter - 16: 'Stob and Staik’ Chapter - 17: ‘Rube, Burne, Spoyll, Slaye, Murder annd Destrewe’ Chapter - 18: The Final Partition Chapter - 19: Hector of ye Harlawe Chapter - 20: Scrope Chapter - 21: Tarras Moss Chapter - 22: ‘A Factious and Naughty People’ Chapter - 23: Silence Unit - 4: PART FOUR Chapter - 24: Graticules Chapter - 25: The Kingdom of Selgovia Chapter - 26: ‘Arthur’ Chapter - 27: The Great Caledonian Invasion Chapter - 28: Polling Stations Chapter - 29: No Man’s Land Chapter - 30: The River Section - iv: Appendix Section - v: Chronology Section - vi: Notes Section - vii: Works Cited Index - viii: General Index Index - ix: Geographical Index Acknowledgements - x: Acknowledgements
Graham Robb was born in Manchester in 1958 and is a former fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He has published widely on French literature and history. His 2007 book The Discovery of France won both the Duff Cooper and Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prizes. For Parisians (2010) the City of Paris awarded him the Grande Médaille de la Ville de Paris. He lives on the English-Scottish border.
Sorting out the fact from the fiction in this history is one of
Robb’s tasks. He tackles some serious misconceptions about the
borderland . . . Robb intercuts the past and present, the intimate
and the impersonal, to wonderful effect. Few authors write so well
about things lost and neglected – or have such sharp ears and eyes
for the natural world
*Guardian*
Graham Robb is a remarkable writer . . . [his work] displays
curiosity, intellectual vitality, wide-ranging sympathies, and a
keen eye for unexpected detail. This new book will fascinate
everyone with a knowledge of the geography, history, mythology and
character of the Anglo-Scottish borderlands . . . No short review
can do justice to the intelligence, charm, variety and sheer
interest of this book. Read it, and you will be richly entertained
and enlightened.
*The Scotsman*
A detective outing on native soil. Armed with energy, humour, a
poet’s eye and a bicycle – all things his fans will be familiar
with – Robb probes the received wisdoms of the past . . . His skill
as a writer is to understand, without being fey, the fourth
dimension: peeling back the modern landscape to find buried
stories
*The Times*
Scholarly nonfiction written with novelistic flair . . . The
Debatable Land was neither English nor Scottish but a law unto
itself, and it became notorious as the centre of reiver violence .
. . But Robb, like a conjuror, gradually shows us the Debatable
Land as something else . . . his exploration of its history is
punctuated by some terrific nature writing
*Observer*
It’s a book worth reading . . . it contains several glories, much
fine writing and the odd (very odd) wonder.
*Sunday Times*
This is a book written as much on the road as in the library . . .
Robb’s book is both a scholarly work of revisionism and an
entertaining read . . . One of the pleasures of this book is to
watch Robb, like a frontier dodging reiver, slip between past and
present, between manuscript and moor, between battlefield site and
the 127 bus
*Daily Telegraph*
Diverting asides animate Robb’s revelatory account of this
oft-overlooked and understudied part of the United Kingdom . . .
The Debatable Land ends with a brace of discoveries. The first is a
key to understanding Ptolemy’s second-century map of Britain,
hitherto thought inaccurate, which will surely be invaluable to
future historians. The second is the earliest account told from a
British point of view of a major battle in these islands. This is
all fascinating.
*Literary Review*
Graham Robb, apart from being a distinguished historian, biographer
and literary critic, is one of our most accomplished travel writers
. . . he bicycles with the speed and ferocity of a Scottish reiver
through these lost flatlands of history
*Spectator*
An original and surprising book . . . he ranges with admirable ease
over the centuries . . . Robb doesn’t move far from his new home,
yet this is a travel book, with a journey in time as well as space
. . . the twists and turns of imagined and reimagined history brood
over this richly wonderful book
*The Oldie*
Travelogue, history and elucidation, this book is one of timely
exploration. Going backwards, it goes forwards and there are many
felicities along the way . . . The Debatable Land has excellent
illustrations and indices. Elegant and with learning lightly worn,
it is, in every respect, an exemplary and topical book, a perfect
paradigm of its kind.
*Country Life*
Innovative methodology, rejection of mythology, precise expression
. . . such a wonderful book
*Scottish Review of Books*
It is three-parts history (as you would expect of Robb’s historical
pedigree) and one-part nature writing. A vision of a marginal place
(or at least marginal to the urban centres, not to itself of
course) through time, written against a backdrop of both the 2014
independence referendum and the 2016 Brexit vote
*Herald (Scotland)*
Rising from this roving, poetic account, which dips in and out of
memoir, anecdote and history, is a sense of loosely documented but
fierce regional drama . . . Throughout, Robb unpicks ballads and
legends – the stuff of old propaganda – with a warm but pleasingly
sceptical approach. His search throws up surprises. Reading this
book at times resembles a ramble through richly tangled terrain
with a guide who is joyously diverted by discovery . . . Its paths
deserve to be retaken slowly, chapter by chapter – but the walk is
always worthwhile.
*Mail on Sunday*
Robb’s forays through the region, by bike and in archives, is
timely, revisionist and entertaining
*Daily Telegraph, Summer Reading 2018*
[An] entertaining work of geographical sleuthing . . . Drawing on
archeological evidence, archival sources, and local gossip, [Robb]
uncovers a lost world, complete with laws, customs, clans, and
hierarchies. Surprises abound, including the discovery that this
may well be “the oldest detectable territorial division in Great
Britain,” with roots in pre-Roman times.
*New Yorker*
Robb uses his vast knowledge of Celtic history, languages, and
geography to create a fascinating book of history and adventure.
Regarding the strange story of what is called the "Debatable Land,"
the author turns to writings both ancient and modern as he applies
archaeological methods to history . . . Readers will have fun
following along with Robb's intriguing historical journey of
discovery through this magical realm . . . An
imagination-stimulating work in which the past seems "to dissolve
and reshape itself."
*Kirkus Reviews (starred review)*
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