It is appropriate that an author with such a surname should write a history of the area known as the Debatable Land. Graham Robb's subject is the rural region that straddles a small portion of the border between Scotland and England but for centuries belonged to neither. In the 16th century it was under the control of the reivers, or robbers, an assortment of feuding clans led by Armstrongs, Elliots, Nixons and Grahams. The area, Mr. Robb writes, had “a fully developed, indigenous legal system,” though this seems to have consisted largely of perverse justifications for sheep stealing, cattle rustling and whatever slaughter was necessary to facilitate these activities.
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