Robbie Burns wrote some of the loveliest and most moving poetry of his or any other age. A farmer’s son, he was lionised by the literary society of his day, but neglected by them when he died, only 37 years old. In the 250 years since his birth, his reputation has varied between that of immoral drunkard and the poster-boy of Scottish tourism, but his words helped revive the folk tradition and prefigured the Romantic movement. Ranging from libertarianism, satire, love songs, description, meditations, polemics and portraits, this selection shows the extraordinary range of Burns’s inimitable genius.