In Along The Borders, the travel journalist Richard Collett sets out to journey along Britain’s borders, both internal and external, to discover their origins and relevance.

 They include some surprises, such as the lovely River Tamar, separating England from what Cornishmen call Kernow, and actually ‘one of the world’s oldest “national” boundaries’. It dates from 936 when Athelstan, first king of all England, set his western borderline here. One local tells the author you mustn’t even call Cornwall a mere county. It’s a duchy.

Then there’s that hidden but deep-rooted line across Scotland dividing the Highlands from the Lowlands, a geological fault ‘rent in stone cold fury 450 million years ago’, and arguably marking as much of a separation as the Anglo-Scottish border itself.

 The old Highlanders even called the country south of the line the Galltachd, ‘the land of the foreigners’.

When he comes to Shetland, locals explain that Edinburgh feels almost as distant as London. Shetland is considerably nearer to the Norwegian coast than to the Scottish capital. ‘We never had kilts or bagpipes here!’ says one. With place-names such as Lerwick and Muckle Flugga, they’re more Norse if anything.

Language is a key marker of difference, with the Cornish increasingly speaking Cornish again, the Scots Gaelic, and all Welsh schools teaching Welsh.

In an increasingly grey and monochrome world, I always thrill when crossing the Severn Bridge and seeing the sign with the Red Dragon and the words Croeso i Gymru! If this is what borders mean – local pride and colourful difference – I’m all for them.

But in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, they meant death. Collett reminds us of such horrors as the Kingsmill Massacre, when Protestant workmen were herded off a bus and machine-gunned by the roadside. It is hard to believe this happened in the UK, just 50 years ago.

Today perhaps our most contested border is the Kent coast. Collett insists those coming in the small boats are refugees, rather prompting the question, what on earth are they fleeing from in France? The rude waiters? The runny camembert? Here his own views do intrude.

In Folkestone he talks to Bridget, ‘a spiky-haired Londoner’ who works for Kent Refugee Action Network and dismisses anyone concerned about the boats as ‘unemployed nutters’. Bridget herself left London (white British population 37 per cent) for Folkestone (white population 92 per cent) because of ‘property prices’. You feel much is left unexplored here.

Collett is troubled by the natural and presumably ineradicable human tendency to self-segregate, to cluster among one’s own people. In Leicester he finds multiple divisions and borders. A local explains: Beaumont Leys – white; St Matthew’s – Somalian; Belgrave Road – Hindu; Spinney Hills – Muslim. 

All fine, colourful and vibrant when everyone gets on. But in the summer of 2022, Leicester’s Hindus and Muslims attacked each other in the streets, with many injuries and subsequent arrests.

There’s ‘a greater need for community integration’ says Collett, a little helplessly. He seems well-meaning but sometimes self-contradictory, and fails to ask hard questions. Might not the rapid ethnic diversification of a formerly pretty homogenous country risk causing more tension and violence?

However, Collett has travelled widely across the UK, talked to numerous people, and he’s an engaging writer and excellent listener. It’s precisely because his book provokes such questions and debates as you read it that it’s so timely and interesting.