Shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards Non-Fiction Book of the
Year 2019
'Anyone who wishes to understand why Brexit is so intractable should
read this book. I can think of several MPs who ought to.' The
Times
For the past two decades, you could cross the border between Northern
Ireland and the Republic half a dozen times without noticing or, indeed,
turning off the road you were travelling. It cuts through fields, winds
back-and-forth across roads, and wends from Carlingford Lough to Lough
Foyle. It is frictionless - a feat sealed by the Good Friday Agreement.
Before that, watchtowers loomed over border communities, military
checkpoints dotted the roads, and smugglers slipped between
jurisdictions. This is a past that most are happy to have left behind
but might it also be the future?
The border has been a topic of dispute for over a century, first in
Dublin, Belfast and Westminster and, post Brexit referendum, in
Brussels. Yet, despite the passions of Nationalists and Unionists in the
North, neither found deep wells of support in the countries they
identified with politically. British political leaders were often
ignorant of the conflict's complexities, rarely visited the border, and
privately disliked their erstwhile unionist allies. Southern leaders'
anti-partition statements masked relative indifference and unofficial
cooperation with British security services.
From the 1920 Government of Ireland Act that created the border, the
Treaty and its aftermath, through the Civil Rights Movement, Thatcher,
the Troubles and the Good Friday Agreement up to the Brexit
negotiations, Ferriter reveals the political, economic, social and
cultural consequences of the border in Ireland. With the fate of the
border uncertain, The Border is a timely intervention by a renowned
historian into one of the most contentious and misunderstood political
issues of our time.
