Borderlines

Europe’s internal borders have rarely been ‘natural’; they have more often been created by accident or force. Successive powers have redrawn the map of our continent, with varying degrees of success: the fingerprints of Napoleon, Alexander I, Castlereagh, Napoleon III and Bismarck are all there, but the present shape of Europe is mostly the work of the Allies in 1919 and Stalin in 1945. In this book, writer and political historian Lewis Baston journeys along and across key borders from west to east Europe, to explore their history. He explores how places and people heal from the scars, physical and psychological, left by a Europe of ethnic cleansing and barbed wire fences.