A Toast Fae the Lassies review – Robert Burns’s women torn between seduction and outrage
The Burns Project review – Scotland’s national poet in all his glory and contradictions
May 2025
Beam me up, Scotland: a journey into outer space in Dumfries and Galloway
Ten years ago, the late land artist Charles Jencks created Crawick Multiverse out of an ugly open-cast mine in southern Scotland. Today, it is an inspiring exploration of the universe
March 2025
Country diary
Country diary: An adder, back from the ‘dead’ in a burial cairn
Kirkcudbright, Dumfries and Galloway: It’s a day of seeing those who are keen not to be seen – not least a magnificent snake, lured out from hibernation
January 2024
Re-evaluating Rabbie: the Scottish poets wrestling with Robert Burns’ legacy
Egg timer, Coke bottle and a skull cast: VR puts Burns memorabilia in reach
February 2023
Charity unveils plan to save barn where Robert Burns wrote Auld Lang Syne
Brief letters
The secret of happy home working? A good local pub
January 2023
Rare Robert Burns book found in a barber shop goes on display
The first edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect is now on display in Fife, with 50 pages missing due to being torn out and used to clean razors
August 2022
Carol Rumens's poem of the week
Poem of the week: Sonnet on Reading Burns’ To a Mountain Daisy by Helen Maria Williams
A fierce defence of his battles with ‘adverse fortune’ suggests Robert Burns was invigorated by the confrontation
Burn; Ballet Freedom review – Alan Cumming gives it a whirl as Robert Burns
The actor makes his dance debut in a visually stunning yet curiously empty life of the poet. But every move counts in the Freedom Ballet of Ukraine’s glorious dark erotica
Alan Cumming: ‘You’d be shocked by the messages Miriam Margolyes and I leave each other!’
As he brings his one-man show about ‘rockstar’ poet Robert Burns to the Edinburgh festival, the star talks about desire, debauchery and dancing in his 50s
January 2022
Alan Cumming to play Robert Burns in solo dance-theatre show
Robert Burns letters reveal poet was advised not to write in Scots
December 2021
Auld Lang Syne arm-linking at new year connected to Freemasons, book finds
Study of Robert Burns’s best-known song associates joining of arms with masonic ‘circle of unity’
Rescued library of literary treasures evokes closeness to authors
Analysis: Honresfield library brings Brontës, Austen and others to life, as characters leap from handwritten pages
Lost library of literary treasures saved for UK after charity raises £15m
The Honresfield library, including manuscripts by the Brontës, Jane Austen and Walter Scott, had been at risk of falling into private hands
June 2021
UK libraries and museums unite to save ‘astonishing’ lost library from private buyers
Friends of the National Libraries launch ‘once in a generation’ effort to raise £15m to buy the Honresfield library, packed with works by Brontë sisters, Jane Austen and Walter Scott
January 2021
Burns Night goes virtual: 'It might be even bigger this year'
Thousands join events in Scotland and far afield, and post-a-haggis service is in high demand
October 2020
The literary beauty of regional accents
Letters: Shakespeare, to name but one famous writer, almost certainly spoke with a Midlands accent, writes Salley Vickers.And Rev Jennifer Williamson fondly recalls her lecturer’s comeback
