The Bard

Magnificent... This is a fine biography, and it is difficult to imagine its being surpassed for a very long time -- Alexander McCall Smith * Daily Telegraph * Crawford has delivered a living Burns: smart, arrogant, chivalrous, but also a strong poet to be confronted at every step of our written and sung culture. After this, we can't just take Burns down from the shelf this one night a year -- Brian Morton * Observer * Robert Crawford gives us a sympathetic portrait of a self-fashioning Burns who has to imagine himself as a bard - a poet not only in word but in act - in order to become one. Crawford's Burns, merrily mixing high and low culture, seems eerily contemporary * New Yorker * Generous, highly intelligent and comprehensive biography...a portrait that comes nearer to the whole man than any other yet written...I can't imagine a better life of the Bard being written. It is likely to become the standard work: certainly it deserves to be greeted as that * Literary Review * Crawford has produced an act of homage as well as a fine biogrpahy * Sunday Times * Lively, learned accounts of often misinterpreted lives -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent * If you go into it knowing nothing of him you will emerge with understanding and admiration -- Susan Hill * The Lady * Crawford is a sensitive chronicler of the poet and dogged debunker of the mythology that the legend of Burns has accreted over the centuries -- Colin Waters * Sunday Herald * It is in the tonal analysis of Burns's poems that Crawford is at his best in this outstanding book ... it is beautifully produced, with an unpretentious elegance that Burns would have approved -- John Carey * New York Review *