Frontiers By Ronald Eyre, Nadine Gordimer
Frontiers (First Edition Hardcover Copy)
The Book of the Celebrated BBC TV Series Exploring the Great Man-Made Dividing Lines of the World
The Book of the Celebrated BBC TV Series Exploring the Great Man-Made Dividing Lines of the World
Bibliographic Specifications
- Title: Frontiers
- Authors: Ronald Eyre, Nadine Gordimer, Christopher Hitchens, Frederic Raphael, Richard Rodriguez, Jon Swain, Nigel Hamilton, and John Wells
- Publisher: BBC Books, London
- Publication Date: 1990
- ISBN-10: 0563207019
- ISBN-13: 9780563207016
- Edition Details: First UK Edition, First Printing. Stated First Edition hardcover release with original unclipped dust jacket.
- Binding: Original publisher's premium textured cloth-covered boards with crisp gilt-stamped lettering running down the spine, complete with structurally sound endpapers.
- Physical Format: Octavo (8vo), 272 pages. Heavily illustrated throughout with over 100 historical, vivid full-colour and crisp black-and-white field photographs captured directly during the filming of the 1989 BBC television documentary series.
- Language: English
Official Condition Report
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The Book: Near Fine (NF) / Mint
- Exterior / Cloth Boards: The cloth casing remains in pristine, absolute mint condition. The binding is perfectly square and sits completely flat. The corners are razor-sharp with no traces of shelf friction or bumping along the lower board rims. The spine ends are crisp and stiff, remaining completely undamaged.
- Interior: The text block is robustly bound, completely clean, and tight. The internal pages and photographic sections are pristine, bright white, and entirely free of student highlighting, ink margin notations, dealer pencil prices, folds, or dog-ears.
- Provenance: An immaculate archival-grade volume showing no signs of institutional library stamps, previous owner nameplates, or remainder marks.
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The Dust Jacket: Very Good Plus (VG+)
- Condition Details: The original, gloss-finish illustrated dust jacket exhibits bright colors and clear contrast. It shows very limited, microscopic signs of handling and light storage friction along the outer edges. It features no structural tears, open chips, or sun fading, and comes protected in a clear, archival Cellophane cover.
Synopsis & Historical Value
Published in 1990 as the companion volume to the acclaimed 1989 BBC television series, Frontiers brings together an elite lineup of the world's most brilliant writers, journalists, and historians to bear witness to the great man-made dividing lines cutting across humanity. The book explores how cultural, linguistic, religious, and racial barriers manifest across the globe.
The narrative is structured as a series of primary-source essays: Novelist Frederic Raphael explores the Pyrenees separating France and Spain; John Wells visits the fracturing Iron Curtain between East and West Germany just prior to its historic fall; and Washington columnist Christopher Hitchens investigates the bitter green line separating Greek and Turkish Cypriots on Cyprus. Crucially for local history, Nobel Prize-winning South African author Nadine Gordimer travels directly into the dangerous, war-torn border zones dividing South Africa and Mozambique during the dying days of Apartheid. Additional accounts include Richard Rodriguez examining the meeting of First and Third worlds along the US–Mexico border, Ronald Eyre analyzing the deeply scarred Protestant–Catholic divides in Northern Ireland, Nigel Hamilton tracing the tense Russia–Finland boundary, and Jon Swain reporting from the Thai–Cambodian refugee camps where thousands had been stranded for over a decade.
Author Profile: The Core Contributors
- Ronald Eyre (1929–1992) was an acclaimed English theatre director, writer, and BBC documentarian, universally recognized for writing and presenting the monumental television masterpiece The Seven Ages of Man.
- Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) was a world-renowned South African novelist, political activist, and winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature, globally celebrated for her uncompromising literary indictments of the Apartheid regime.
- Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) was a highly influential Anglo-American author, polemicist, and legendary political columnist for The Nation, Vanity Fair, and Harper's Magazine.
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