Robert Burns

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the man who, in his lifetime, was called The Caledonian Bard and whose fame and influence was to spread around the world. Burns (1759-1796) was born in Ayrshire and his work as a tenant farmer earned him the label The Ploughman Poet, yet it was the quality of his verse that helped his reputation endure and grow. His work inspired other Romantic poets and his personal story and ideas combined with that, giving his poems a broad strength and appeal - sung by revolutionaries and on Mao’s Long March, as well as on New Year’s Eve and at Burns Suppers.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Robert Crawford No other episodes
  Professor of Modern Scottish Literature and Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews
• Fiona Stafford 2 episodes
  Professor of English at the University of Oxford
• Murray Pittock 6 episodes
  Bradley Professor of English Literature and Pro Vice Principal at the University of Glasgow

Reading list

• Robert Burns: The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns
  Robert Burns (ed. James Kinsley) (Oxford University Press, 2015) Google Books →
• The Edinburgh Companion to Robert Burns
  Gerard Carruthers (ed.) (Edinburgh University Press, 2009) Google Books →
• Robert Burns
  Gerard Carruthers (Northcote House Publishers, 2007) Google Books →
• The Bard: Robert Burns, A Biography
  Robert Crawford (Jonathan Cape, 2009) Google Books →
• Robert Burns and Cultural Authority
  Robert Crawford (ed.) (University of Iowa Press, 1997) Google Books →
• The Best Laid Schemes: Selected Poetry and Prose of Robert Burns
  Robert Crawford and Christopher MacLachlan (ed.) (Polygon, 2009)
• Robert Burns and Pastoral: Poetry and Improvement in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland
  Nigel Leask (Oxford University Press, 2015) Google Books →
• The Oxford Edition of the Works of Robert Burns: Volume I: Commonplace Books, Tour Journals and Miscellaneous Prose
  Nigel Leask (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2014)
• The Burns Supper: A Concise History
  Clark McGinn (Luath Press, 2018) Google Books →
• Burns the Radical: Politics and Poetry in Late Eighteenth-century Scotland
  Liam McIlvanney (Tuckwell Press, 2002)
• The Oxford Edition of the Works of Robert Burns: Volumes II and III: The Scots Musical Museum
  Murray Pittock (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2018)
• Robert Burns in Global Culture
  Murray Pittock (ed.) (Bucknell University Press, 2011) Google Books →
• Burns and Other Poets
  David Sergeant and Fiona Stafford (eds.) (Edinburgh University Press, 2011) Google Books →
• Immortal Memory: Burns and the Scottish People
  Chris Whatley (John Donald, 2016) Google Books →

Related episodes

• The Romantics
  
  12 Oct, 2000 820 English and Old English literatures
• The Later Romantics
  
  15 Apr, 2004 820 English and Old English literatures
• Dylan Thomas
  
  16 Jun, 2022 820 English and Old English literatures
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
  
  21 Mar, 2019 820 English and Old English literatures
• Yeats and Mysticism
  
  31 Jan, 2002 820 English and Old English literatures
• Lyrical Ballads
  
  8 Mar, 2012 820 English and Old English literatures
• Pope
  
  9 Nov, 2006 820 English and Old English literatures
• Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
  
  6 Jan, 2011 820 English and Old English literatures
• Anna Akhmatova
  
  18 Jan, 2018 890 Other literatures
• John Clare
  
  7 May, 2020 820 English and Old English literatures

---

Programme ID: m0009kkn

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009kkn

Auto-category: 821.6 (English poetry)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. In 1786, Robert Burns had a collection of his verse published.