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The Border

The Legacy of a Century of Anglo-Irish Politics

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The Border

By: Diarmaid Ferriter
Narrated by: Aidan Kelly
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For the past two decades, you could cross the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic half a dozen times without noticing or, indeed, without turning off the road you were travelling. It cuts through fields, winds back-and-forth across roads, and wends from the mouth of the Newry River to the mouth of the Foyle. It's frictionless - a feat sealed by the Good Friday Agreement. Before that, watchtowers loomed over border communities, military checkpoints dotted the roads, and bridges had been demolished to prevent crossings. This is a past that most are happy to have left behind but it may also be the future.

The border between the Irish Republic-Northern Ireland border has been a topic of dispute for over a century, first in Dublin, Belfast and Westminster and now, post referendum, in Brussels. Diarmaid Ferriter charts its history from the divisive 1920s Act to the Treaty and its aftermath, through 'the Troubles' and the Good Friday Agreement up to the Brexit negotiations. With the fate of the border uncertain, the Border is a timely intervention into one of the most contentious and misunderstood political issues of our time. Europe Great Britain England United Kingdom Irish Politics
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I have been interested in modern Irish history for a long time and have never really understood the border other to know it had caused a lot of trouble in my lifetime. This book explains the history of Ireland’s independence from the British Empire and how the border and subsequent troubles came about. It tells the painstaking politics it took to bring about a fragile peace. It also talks about the damage Brexit could do to that peace and of English exceptionalism and magical thinking.

A great bit of history seriously misunderstood by many.

Irish history every English person should know

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Perhaps not easily digestible in audio form for everyone. Some folk might appreciate this more if they're able to keep track of dates and names on paper. I found myself getting a little lost, especially in areas/decades where I had very little background knowledge. The content is solid, the narrator was good, but the scope of the task and the speed with which we moved through time made it hard to grapple with everything in the book.

That said, I might just listen again to the chapters I struggled with.

Lots of dates

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The best book I have listened to on the border to date! Gives an in depth background into the border and how it came about and the implications of it past, present and future. A must read!

The most accessible history on the border

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The regular and in most respects fair criticism of the English is that neither know nor care about Ireland / the Republic / Northern Ireland / the Island of Ireland etc. I often think it’s similar to English complaints that the US knows nothing about the UK [and it should]. Well in the car-crash of the last few years in UK / Little Englander politics, this book should be compulsory reading. In fact it should have been compulsory reading before 2016 when many in the UK lost their tiny collective minds. This book brings together very swiftly all the complexity and nuance, and not so nuanced, aspects of the conundrum that is Ireland. I like to think myself as one of the exceptions. I’ve lived and worked in Northern Ireland, travelled extensively across the Republic of Ireland, and am a self-confessed Hibernophile for as s long as I can remember (40+ years). And if these DNA kits are to be believed I have recently found out that I am of ‘common stock from Ireland / Wales and North Scotland. Not England, but also interestingly – not Northern Ireland (C20th version of Ulster) either; there is distinct difference from NI and the remainder of the Island.

And it got me thinking. Ulster (original form) was once the poorest and “most Gaelic” of the Provinces, resisted the Vikings more than the rest of the Ireland, and of course, whilst Ireland exported Gaels to Scotland, it was the Lowland Scots (and English) – a different breed - who were ‘planted’ back into the North East of the Ireland – the beginning of the Province becoming the most wealthy (at the expense of the indigenous Irish) and the ‘least Gaelic’ of the Ireland. Apart from Donegal. And so - influenced by great writers as Simon Winchester (what is the geological as well as the cultural effects?) and Tim Marshall – what revenge does geography take, and how much is Ulster a ‘prisoner of its own Geography’. And what about the ‘invention of GAA’ – the brilliant and both public and private, conscious and subconscious strategy that banned the ‘foreign [British] sports’ so loved by Irish people today, and endures under extreme ‘external pressures’. I think I would have appreciated perhaps some of these perspectives ‘in the mix’ – even the ‘DNA map’ – to look at whether there might be another path – now that UK’s exit from the EU has put peace back into in jeopardy again. It is easy to say that eventually the ‘North will vote itself back into the South’ (assuming the Dail will be able to afford the Public Sector tariff that comes with NI) but if these differences are more than cultural and religious, but also geological, geographical (prisoners and ‘revengeesque’,and possibly ethnicity (in the wider DNA sense).

And so, a brilliant little book, that all the British should read. Understand the complexities of the Island, reconcile that whilst the UK Flag is used to represent half of the NI people, this only makes them ‘not Southern Irish’ - their own form of Irish, that is both similar and different in equal measure. I loved living in NI, I have many close friends from the moderate middle rump who are compelled to vote for one extreme or the other (their origins) but wish to simply get on with their lives. This book might be a few years old now but it holds true as not only an accurate account of how we got here, but also, in 2023, why we might all be holding our collective breaths again.

Holding our collective breath again.

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I loved this book. A thoroughly engaging listen that gave a really up to date view of recent Irish history.

A brilliant overview

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