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Drama on 4: Douglas Livingstone - Road to the Borders

Road to the Borders

28/06/2012

Douglas Livingstone - Road to the Borders

BBC Radio 4 - Drama on 4, Douglas Livingstone - Road to the Borders

The Reivers Festival in Hawick is the setting for a love story.

4 Extra Debut. The Reivers Festival, celebrating the exploits of lawless Scots raiders, is the setting for a love story. Stars Jasper Britton.

Written by Douglas Livingstone.

Road to the Borders is set in Hawick over the weekend of the Reivers' Festival - a few days when the deeds of the reivers (dictionary definition: one who makes raids or plunders) are celebrated. 

Until James I & VI united England and Scotland the reivers ruled the Borders, stealing their neighbours' cattle and exacting revenge for the raids they suffered themselves. Hamish is as English as they come, but his father was born in the Borders and Jim's pride in his ancestry becomes more marked the older he becomes. As he looks back with regret to the rules that governed his forbears, he wishes his son could be more like the reivers of old.

Road to the Borders is the sixth play in the Road series, in which writer Douglas Livingstone and director Jane Morgan team up at an event. The particular sounds are recorded and the atmosphere absorbed before Douglas writes the play. On this occasion, he responded to the romance and melodrama of the story of the reivers and the fact that his own father was a Scot played some part in the making of the play.


Producer/Director: Jane Morgan
A Unique production for BBC Radio 4.

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