Presenting political, historical, cultural and literary perspectives on the Irish border, this volume brings together approaches from different disciplines to assess the changing role and percepton of the border. Following a contextual and historical introduction, a broad political analysis by Paul Arthur places the North-South and British-Irish relationships in their international setting. Ged Martin provides a history of the Partition, and Ian S. Wood brings this history up to the early-1960s in a contribution on the IRA border campaign. In a longer historical view, Ullrich Kockel develops a revised reading of the peculiar Scots-Ulster link. Moving towards contemporary concerns, Etain Tannam explores the changing cross-border relationship in the light of European regional policies in the 1980s and 1990s, while Steve Bruce gives a pessimistic assessment of an enduring Unionist attitude towards the border. Three chapters devoted to culture and identity end the book. The first focuses on different language policies north and south of the border; the second on literature as a source for tracing the development of a border mentality in Ireland; and the third on the development of border politics as expressed in 20th-century literature.