The Rule of the Land

So, The Rule of the Land: Walking Ireland's Border will be published by Faber & Faber at the beginning of Feburary 2017. It is in part the story of Ireland’s border and a portrait of its landscape and people. It is also about reading the power dynamics in a landscape. Almost any landscape has these, but Ireland's border is particularly loaded with claims and counterclaims.

First this three-hundred-mile line demarcated counties, then countries and will next be the frontier of the European Union. It was striking how little Ireland was discussed in the lead-up to the UK referendum on EU membership. You might have thought the border between the UK and the EU was going to be the English Channel. But it won’t be, it’s here, and it’s as thin as wire.

The Rule of the Land explores the borderland during a fragile moment, before an uncertain future.