Author(s): Glenn Patterson

Politics

A witty and impassioned book on Ulster, which has been thrust into the centre of British and European politics and which is likely to become Britain's frontier with the wider world.

Very few citizens of the mainland UK know very much about Ulster, after 20 years of uneasy peace. Backstop Landinvestigates the murky network of ever-renewing tentacles of the IRA, and the lives of those who support and lead the DUP, who have held British politics to ransom for three years - a fundamentalist, embittered and irreconcilable minority with its sincere belief in religious truths that seem alien to the vast majority of secular Britons.

Patterson is a brilliantly witty observer of his community, and as a liberal Protestant (and Unionist) married to a southern Catholic he can explore both worlds with equal ease. There are endless books about the legacy of the Troubles, but nothing like this.