Explores Robert Burns's political legacy in modern and contemporary Scotland

Uses Burns's lens to study radical changes in Scottish cultural politics, from Victorian unionism to contemporary nationalism.
Discusses Burns's influence on Scottish unionism, conservativism, nationalism, socialism, fascism, communism, modernism, antiracism, and feminism.
Analyses Burns's reception by key Scottish writers, including Hugh MacDiarmid, Edwin Muir, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Hamish Henderson, Edwin Morgan, and Liz Lochhead.
Brings together political history and literary criticism with a wide range of primary sources, including rare television footage and exclusive interviews with poets and politicians.

Robert Burns is Scotland's best known and most influential poet; yet his political legacy also ranks amongst the most contentious. His ambiguous verse, oscillating between patriotic odes, egalitarian lines and royalist songs, lends itself to interpretations from across the political divide.

Blending political history and literary studies, this book explores this contested legacy of 'Scotland's National Bard'. It follows the transformations of Burns's image throughout the late modern era, as revolutionaries, nationalists and avant-garde writers co-opted Burns's myth to subvert their country's social and constitutional order. From Great War unionism to 1940s socialism and contemporary nationalism, the examination of Burns's tempestuous afterlives sheds light on the ongoing Scottish question. Overall, it reminds us that poetry is shifting ground on which to build a national identity.