Robert Burns was a farmer's boy from Ayrshire who went on to be the most acclaimed of all Scottish poets, celebrated around the world. This selection by Ian Rankin of verses and lyrics by the 'Heaven-taught ploughman' reveals Burns as a writer of tremendous imaginative sympathy with an easy, astonishing command of both standard English and the evocative Scots tongue. It also gives free rein to his incredible range - with poems gripping and fantastical, profound and political, romantic and bawdy. Truly the best of the Scottish Bard.