BURNS COUNTRY

Robert Burns, or ‘Rabbie’ as he is more affectionately known, is Scotland’s answer to William Shakespeare. Though his writing, largely written in Scots dialect, was indisputably beautiful, his enduring charm is probably down to the fact that he spoke to the common man and for them.

Burns was born in the little village of Alloway, just a couple of miles from the Ayrshire coast, in 1759. Though educated, Burns’ early life was humble: his father, William, was a gardener on a local estate (later a tenant farmer) and his mother, Agnes, managed the family’s smallholding.

Burns spent the first seven years of his life in Alloway, in a two-bed but and ben