The Debatable Land: The Lost World Between Scotland and England

by Graham Robb

Overview

Best-selling author Graham Robb finds that the 2,000-year-old map of Ptolemy unlocks a central mystery of British history.

Two years ago, Graham Robb moved to a lonely house on the very edge of England, near the banks of a river that once marked the southern boundary of the legendary Debatable Land. The oldest detectable territorial division in Great Britain, the Debatable Land served as a buffer between Scotland and England. It was once the bloodiest region in the country, fought over by Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and James V. After most of its population was slaughtered or deported, it became the last part of Great Britain to be brought under the control of the state. Today, it has vanished from the map and its boundaries are matters of myth and generational memories.

Under the spell of a powerful curiosity, Robb began a journey—on foot, by bicycle, and into the past—that would uncover lost towns and roads, and unlock more than one discovery of major historical significance. These personal and scholarly adventures reveal a tale that spans Roman, Medieval, and present-day Britain.

Rich in detail and epic in scope, The Debatable Land takes us from a time when neither England nor Scotland existed to the present day, when contemporary nationalism and political turmoil threaten to unsettle the cross-border community once more. With his customary charm, wit, and literary grace, Graham Robb proves the Debatable Land to be a crucial, missing piece in the puzzle of British history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393285321
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/12/2018
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	540,172
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Bestselling author Graham Robb is a former Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He has won the Whitbread Biography Prize and the Heinemann Award for Victor Hugo, as well as the Ondaatje Prize and Duff Cooper Prize for The Discovery of France. His book Parisians was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

List of Figures xi

A Guide to Pronunciation xiii

Part 1

1 Hidden Places 3

2 Outpost 6

3 Panic Button 16

4 The True and Ancient Border 21

5 'The Sewer of Abandoned Men' 27

6 Mouldywarp 38

7 Beachcombing 43

Part 2

8 Blind Roads 51

9 Harrowed 61

10 'Loveable Custumis' 67

11 Accelerated Transhumance 76

12 Skurrlywarble 82

13 Exploratores 89

14 Windy Edge 97

15 'In Tymis Bigane' 106

Part 3

16 'Stob and Staik' 115

17 'Rube, Burne, Spoyll, Slaye, Murder annd Destrewe' 125

18 The Final Partition 133

19 Hector of ye Harlawe 140

20 Scrope 150

21 Tarras Moss 160

22 'A Factious and Naughty People' 168

23 Silence 181

Part 4

24 Graticules 187

25 The Kingdom of Selgovia 198

26 'Arthur' 205

27 The Great Caledonian Invasion 216

28 Polling Stations 226

29 No Man's Land 232

30 The River 237

Appendix 241

Chronology 265

Notes 271

Works Cited 299

General Index 317

Geographical Index 325

Acknowledgements 333

Editorial Reviews

★ 04/16/2018
Robb’s move to the singular “Debatable Land” on the border of present-day England and Scotland inspired this combination bicycle travelogue, regional history, and declaration of admiration. Covering 33,000 acres on either side of the Scottish-English border, this uninhabited middle ground originally, in ancient times, served as communal (“bateable”) livestock pastures, Robb (The Discovery of Middle Earth) explains, preserving a historically delicate balance in a region where family loyalty rules and accents vary significantly over a few miles. Later, a core group of families, like the Armstrongs and Nixons, made up the “reivers,” who made their living stealing livestock and household goods, leaving burned houses in their wake and introducing the words “blackmail” and “bereaved” into English. Robb’s passion for cycling and amiable persona provide him with a ground-level view, allowing him to observe how the reality of life in the borderlands differs from the myths, such as the inaccurate story that blames a curved ditch obstacle on “Anglo-Scottish strife.” Focusing on this one remarkable region, Robb’s two-wheeled perspective and highly observant eye allow him to ruminate through the Celtic, medieval, and present eras with ease; readers are lucky to join him on his enthralling journey. (June)

Publishers Weekly

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

A book worth reading . . . it contains several glories, much fine writing and the odd (very odd) wonder. 

Sunday Times

★ 2018-03-20
Robb (The Discovery of Middle Earth: Mapping the Lost World of the Celts, 2013, etc.) 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. This 33,000-acre site is the oldest detectable territorial division in Great Britain. It is devoid of archaeological evidence between the Roman period and the 1500s, which leads Robb to posit that perhaps it was just uninhabitable. Located northeast of the Solway Firth above Cumbria's Lake District, it was a no-man's land, a buffer neither Scottish nor English, and open to murder and mayhem by parliamentary decrees of both countries. Until nearly the 1600s, no buildings or cultivation were allowed, and cattle could pasture only between sunrise and sunset. Cattle thieves plied their trade in a reasonably civilized manner governed by March law, a code common and efficient to both sides and unique to the area. It governed the use of hostages to prevent reprisals, established the traditional days of truce, and ensured compliance. On the truce days, livestock owners would receive the value of the stolen animals in money, corn, or merchandise. Throughout the book, readers will be impressed with Robb's archival digging, especially as he turns to Ptolemy's 150 C.E. map of Britain—not just the source, but the fact that the author corrected the grid of Ptolemy's map, which was inaccurate. Readers will have fun following along with Robb's intriguing historical journey of discovery through this magical realm. In a series of appendices, the author provides detailed maps of different areas of the region as well as a timeline that runs from 43 C.E. to 1793.An imagination-stimulating work in which the past seems "to dissolve and reshape itself."

Kirkus Reviews

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.

Ian Jack - Guardian

An amiably learned, leisurely tour of the land’s history, chinked with anecdotes.

Christian Science Monitor

Revelatory.

Alan Taylor - Literary Review

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.

Times (UK)

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

It’s a book worth reading… it contains several glories, much fine writing and the odd (very odd) wonder.

Andrew Marr - Sunday Times (UK)

05/15/2018
In late 2010, Robb (The Ancient Paths) and his wife, Margaret Hambrick, moved to a remote part of northwest England, close to the Scottish border. Their new house was situated near a river that once formed the southern boundary of the Debatable Land, an area that historically acted as a buffer between England and Scotland, belonging to neither country. The area was renowned for the legendary, lawless Border reivers: the families whose marauders regularly conducted raids on either side of the Anglo-Scottish border in the 16th century. But who or what came before this history? Enchanted, Robb sets out to learn more, cycling throughout the Debatable Land and searching local archives. He discovers contradictions: while the Anglo-Scottish border had a reputation for lawlessness, the Debatable Land was actually governed by a "fully-developed…legal system" with a recognizable civil and criminal code. Recalculating the graticules of Ptolemy's early map helps Robb to uncover ancient, long-lost places, which leads him to suggest that the origins of the Debatable Land lie in Roman Britain. VERDICT With imagination and wit, Robb cogently brings the history of the region into sharp focus, satisfying all interested in British and Scottish history.—Penelope J.M. Klein, Fayetteville, NY

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