Product Description

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 valley of Liddesdale to the fortress city of Carlisle, swords and spears spoke while the law remained silent. Fierce family loyalty counted for everything while the rules of nationality counted for nothing. The whole range of the Cheviot Hills, its watershed ridges and the river valleys which flowed out of them became the landscape of larceny while Maxwells, Grahams, Fenwicks, Carletons, Armstrongs and Elliots rode hard and often for plunder. These were the Riding Times and in modern European history, they have no parallel. This book tells the remarkable story of the Reivers and how they made the Borders.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #368879 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 321 pages

About the Author
Alistair Moffat was born and raised in Kelso. He took degrees at the universities of St Andrews, Edinburgh and London and played rugby for Kelso and his universities. In 1976 he took charge of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as it grew into the largest arts festival in the world.

Customer Reviews

A brilliant read on a fascinating period
I've long been a fan of MacDonald Fraser's 'Steel Bonnets' so I was interested to see what Alistair Moffat's book would add.

The hardback is just over 320 pages, grouped into two main parts, four chapters in the first, and three in the second. Add to this five appendices, the bibliography and a concise and easy to use index, there's a lot here to immerse yourself in. And in the centre of the book you have the illustrations, thirty-two superb colour photographs of the landscapes of the Borders that do so much to evoke the mood of the era. They compliment the text admirably.

As you cruise through the book you often have additional box inserts that take the reader off into interesting sidelines of yet more fascinating information. There are just to many to mention, and all add to the flavour that the author provides the reader, with his view of the troubled times of the sixteenth century.

I have to say that from start to finish, I couldn't put this book down. It adds to MacDonald Fraser's work and is a 'must-have' for anyone interested in the hardy doughty folk of the Border, their lawless ways and customs, the feuds and the politics that shaped their life. An inspiring read.

Wonderful popular history...
I found this book at Melrose Abbey on a recent trip to the UK and discovered hours of fun reading. Moffat's style is like talking to a favorite uncle who shares delicious family secrets through his recollection of the period, complete with humor and a bit of honest sarcasm. He makes the history of the Anglo/Scottish Borders and the lives of the Border Reivers come alive. This is wonderful social history, presented in a way that appeals to the larger public audience. I have recommended this book to many American Romance authors who are looking for a great research source on the culture of the Borders, be it the English or Scottish Marches. This is a great companion piece to his THE BORDERS book: same style and presentation. Both should be read and savored for their honest and witty presentation without being too scholarly.

Mindless appaling slaughter

This is a marvellous book, which deals with one of the most contentious periods in British history. For almost 300 years from the time of Edward 1st until the Union of the Crowns under James 1st in 1603, the border region between England and Scotland was little more than a bloodbath, in which it was said that on waking in the morning, the first thing people did was touch the fingers to the throat, to make sure that it had not been slit overnight.

This appalling gratuitous violence, is brought to life brilliantly in this book, in which the violence reaches such a peak in the middle of the 16 century, that it is a wonder there was any border to pacify. Witness the slaying of a fugitive in York, or the genocide carried out by the Johnston's against the Maxwell's in which some 700 Maxwell's were wiped out in a single afternoon, with the blood apparently running through the streets of Lockerbie.

The remarkable thing is that all this actually happened. It is not a figment of a writers imagination. The text is very easy to read, and the pictures are very evocative. If you only ever buy one book on the Reivers, buy this