Borderland

After almost drowning while playing cricket on the Goodwin Sands, Rod Edmond sets out to walk the East Kent coastline from Thanet to Folkestone, to explore its geography, its history of invasion and defence, and investigate how its fabled White Cliffs mark a border that has sometimes offered refuge and at other times refused entry.

He considers how the popular Victorian seaside town of Margate became a dumping ground for refugees and other displaced people - -Dole-on-Sea-- and how it is now being transformed into a thriving cultural centre. At Dover he becomes a visitor and bail surety for asylum-seekers detained in the Citadel, a moated fort on the Western Heights built as a defence against Napoleon. He explores the underground history of the coastline, particularly the Kent coalfield where miners blacklisted in their home pits after the General Strike (internal refugees as he describes them) established an industry alien to the traditional fishing and farming communities of