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In Our Time: Robert Burns

24/10/2019

Robert Burns

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Robert Burns

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry, ideas and life of Robert Burns (1759-1796).

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Ayrshire farmer whose 'Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect' (1786) set him on the way to a worldwide reputation as one of the great poets.

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.

With

Robert Crawford
Professor of Modern Scottish Literature and Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews

Fiona Stafford
Professor of English at the University of Oxford

and 

Murray Pittock
Bradley Professor of English Literature and Pro Vice Principal at the University of Glasgow

Producer: Simon Tillotson

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