In this book, prizewinning writer and historian Ian Crofton embarks on a personal odyssey to the islands encircling England, exploring how some were places of refuge or holiness, while others have become locations for prisons, rubbish dumps or military installations.

As an antidote to more sober accounts of Scotland’s history, Ian Crofon offers a colourful chronology of the eccentric, the infamous, the bawdy, the horrific and the hilarious people and events that have spattered across the pages of our nation’s story.

Ian Crofton makes this journey through some of the most spectacular scenery in Britain, speculating on what the Border signifies - geographically, culturally and emotionally.