Hello everyone and welcome to the latest episode of the UK Inner Changing Europe podcast.

I'm Sarah Hall, I'm Deputy Director at UK Inner Changing, and super relevant for this episode, a professor

of geography at the University of Cambridge. I'm really excited about today's discussion,

which basically engages with two new books on highly geographical topics of borders. And we've

got the authors with us today. So the first book is called

Borderlines, a history of Europe told from the edges. It's written by Louis Baston, a writer of British

politics and the electoral landscape for more than 30 years. And in his book, he essentially

travels across 29 key borders across Europe to try and understand years. And in his book, he essentially travels across 29 key borders across Europe to try and

understand more about the making and remaking of our modern continent. I'm also joined by the author of a

second book called A History of the World in 47 borders, John Lage. And in this book, John looks at how maps and boundaries have shaped

our world over a very long and extensive geographical and historical time period. The book

covers everything from medieval China to the Holy Roman Empire and also asks a question that I want

to return to about whether and why Europe might be thought of as basically a made-up continent.

John's also a writer, needs little introduction, has written for many of our main publications in the UK,

including The Guardian, Telegraph, FT and the New Statesman.

So welcome John and Lewis.

Hello, thank you for having us.

So I wanted to start really.

Both books are about borders.

How did you both become interested in borders?

Because I don't think unlike someone like me who's been trained as a geographer,

your geographers by background.

...