'Fascinating' TOM HOLLAND 'A delight from start to finish' MIRANDA SAWYER 'A novel and
fascinating perspective on world history' BILL BRYSON 'By turns surprising funny bleak
ridiculous or all four of those at once' GIDEON DEFOE 'I love this book I love Jonn Elledge
I love the way he looks at the world' MARINA HYDE People have been drawing lines on maps for
as long as there have been maps to draw on. Sometimes rooted in physical geography sometimes
entirely arbitrary these lines might often have looked very different if a war or treaty or
the decisions of a handful of tired Europeans had gone a different way. By telling the stories
of these borders we can learn a lot about how political identities are shaped why the world
looks the way it does - and about the scale of human folly. From the Roman attempts to define
the boundaries of civilisation to the secret British-French agreement to carve up the Ottoman
Empire during the First World War to the reason why landlocked Bolivia still maintains a navy
this is a fascinating witty and surprising look at the history of the world told through its
borders. The Sunday Times No 1 Bestseller April 2025 More praise for 47 BORDERS:
'Fascinating and hugely entertaining' MARINA HYDE 'You'll never look at a map the same way
again' STEPHEN BUSH '[A] clever confounding history' PATRICK MAGUIRE 'A witty grand tour'
DORIAN LYNSKEY 'Warm funny and sharply political' PHIL TINLINE
