History The Debatable Land by Graham Robb review – the lost world between Scotland and England The historian and biographer traverses perhaps the oldest national land boundary in Europe as he explores a once independent, and very bloody, territory Liddesdale … Walter Scott described it as ‘wild and inaccessible’. This border, Robb suggests, is probably the oldest national land boundary in Europe, little changed in its course since William Rufus, son of the Conqueror, made Cumbria an English colony in 1092. There, until the anomaly was resolved in the mid-16th century, the boundary split into two to encircle an area of 50 square miles that belonged to neither side, known as the Debatable Land. According to Robb, the Debatable Land sits at the fulcrum of British history – a “missing piece in the puzzle”, the last part of Britain to be conquered and brought under the control of the state. • The Debatable Land: The Lost World Between England and Scotland is published by Picador.

Source: The Guardian February 10, 2018 09:00 UTC