The Map: Life and death policing the world’s most dangerous beat by Gordon Adair

For almost three decades, right at the centre of one of the most secretive places in Northern Ireland, the Joint Operations Planning Room for South Armagh, there was a huge map. It showed the rugged, hilly terrain of what was then, if you were a British soldier or a police officer, the most dangerous posting in the world; a place that was hard to know, harder still to hold.