The Reivers

This is a page-turning history, lucidly written, and it is enhanced by a selection of five famous Border ballads. One of the best reads of the year, without doubt' - Hamish Coghill, Scottish Life 'This is a history as exciting and dramatic as the Border ballads themselves' - Cumberland News 'a most compelling, thought-provoking and entertaining history' - The Herald Only one period in history is immediately, indelibly and uniquely linked to the whole area of the Scottish and English Border country, and that is the time of the Reivers. Whenever anyone mentions 'Reiver', no-one hesitates to add 'Border'. It is an inextricable association, and rightly so. Nowhere else in Britain in the modern era, or indeed in Europe, did civil order break down over such a wide area, or for such a long time. For more than a century the hoof-beats of countless raiding parties drummed over the border. From Dumfriesshire to the high wastes of East Cumbria, from Roxburghshire to Redesdale, from the lonely...