Robert Burns in Perthshire

Much has been written about Robert Burns’s early days in Ayrshire and on his latter years in Dumfries. He was, however, a well-travelled poet and songwriter, not least to the fair city of Perth and its yet fairer countryside. Donald Paton’s work in assembling Burns’s links with this highly romantic part of Scotland is thus both welcome and long overdue. The poet’s connections with Perthshire began early. At the Edinburgh home of Professor Adam Ferguson, Perthshire-born at Logierait, the newly arrived Burns was presented to the apex of the capital’s society, among them the economist Adam Smith and the young Walter Scott. The county of Perth played a major role in the Bard’s great project of both conserving and expanding Scotland’s traditional song heritage.All in all, this book deploys the history, culture and the sheer visual beauty of Perthshire to illuminate the life and work of a great poet and songwriter at the peak of his powers.