The 25th of January 2019 sees the 260th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns. Burns has been voted the Greatest Scot by the Scots themselves and his work is known and admired the world over. For a man who died when he was only thirty-seven, that really is an amazing achievement.

Burns lived through personal poverty and ill-health, and also witnessed the harshness of life faced by his fellows on a daily basis. Yet he didn’t shy away from writing about these things. What, to me, makes his work so special, and why I believe it still resonates so strongly with so many of us today, is the way he wrote: for despite all the difficulties, he wrote with warmth, humour and with hope.

The first stamps commemorating Burns were issued in the Soviet Union in 1956

Writing in both Scots and English, Burns’ work moves easily from the comic to the romantic to the political, ringing true in every case.  And I have to admit that while researching and writing this article, I discovered that there was much, much more to Robert Burns than I had realised when I started!

Burns was always generous in acknowledging those who inspired him. And he, in turn, has inspired generations of people ever since. Among that number was Thomas Grant Dey, my shoe-making, ship-building grandfather who grew up in Ayrshire, not many miles from Alloway, where Burns was born. For him, the egalitarian ideals expressed so vividly by Burns, were something all of us should strive for and be proud of.

How fortunate we are to have a man like Burns as part of our nation’s history and culture.  How worthwhile it is to take a longer look at who he was and what he did.  How worthy he is of that glass raised in his honour at your Burns Supper – a man whose works are definitely worth remembering, not just on the 25th of January, but all year round!

The full article is available in iScot Janury 2019