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The Borders

by Alistair Moffat

ISBN: 9781841584669
Imprint: Birlinn
Publication Date: May 2007
Format: Paperback (eBook also available)
Price: £9.99
Stock Status: in stock

eBook also available at the iBookstore

'Highly readable…a lively, clear style.' - Northern History

This is the story of the border: a place of beginnings and endings, of differences and similarities. It is the story of England and Scotland, told not from the remoteness of London or Edinburgh or in the tired terms of national histories, but up close and personal, toe to toe and eyeball to eyeball across the tweed, the Cheviots, the Esk and the tidal races of the upper Solway. This is a tale told in blood, fun and granite-hard memory.

This is the story of an ancient place; where hunter-gatherers penetrated into the virgin interior, where Celtic warlords ruled, the Romans came but could not conquer, where the glittering kingdom of Northumbria thrived, the place where David MacMalcolm raised great abbeys, where the Border Reivers rode into history, and where Walter Scott sat at Abbotsford and brooded on the area’s rich and historic legacy.


Alistair Moffat was born and raised in Kelso. He took degrees at the universities of St Andrews, Edinburgh and London and played rugby for Kelso and his universities. In 1976 he took charge of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as it grew into the largest arts festival in the world. He now chairs the Borders Book Festival and has written many bestselling titles for Birlinn including The Reivers, Sea Kingdoms and The Wall.

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