1. Under the clouds
I left home in Fife and went to live in Glasgow when I was eighteen. When I think of it now, the distance seems laughably small – forty miles, little more than an hour in the train – but the contrast between a village on the east coast and a city, Scotland’s largest, on the west coast was sharp and exciting. I had a bedsit in a dark street of better-class tenements, with a Polish delicatessen, a dance hall and a cinema just round the corner. Glasgow seemed an infinite place, never to be known completely no matter how many suburban bus terminals you reached or exploratory walks you made. It was 1963. The last trams had run the year before, but the city was still much its old self – smoke-blackened, run-down, Victorian, majestic, tipsy on beer and whisky on a Saturday night, hushed on a Sunday. More than a million people lived there then; forty years later, that figure had almost halved.
Beautiful Scots home goes on sale - and it even comes with its own castle in the garden
Included in the sale are the remains of the historic Inverugie Castle.
The pretty house comes with a big add on. (Image: Galbraith s)
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Widely regarded as one the greatest poets of all time, it is no surprise the nation is still celebrating the life and works of Robert Burns 225 after his death. The Scottish Bard, born in Alloway on 25 January 1759, was the eldest of farmer William Burnes and Agnes Broun’s seven children. Growing up, Burns was tutored in reading and writing by his father before receiving a Latin and French education from John Murdoch between 1765 and 1768. Though he was not formally encouraged into poetry until he met Captain Richard Brown in the early 1780s, Burns first attempt is believed to have been inspired by Nelly Kilpatrick at the age of 15. An assistant on the farm during the harvest of 1774, Nelly is thought to have been his first love and the the subject of “O, Once I Lov’d a Bonnie Lass”.
Scotland s most famous poet almost relocated to the Caribbean
Credit: Getty
If Robert Burns had got his way we might celebrate Burns Night by eating rice and peas and jerk chicken – perhaps with a ginger beer or a Red Stripe – rather than haggis, neaps and a dram. The tough lot of a farmer’s son and, later, as a tenant farmer, and the birth of no fewer than three illegitimate daughters in the space of a year, led Burns to seriously contemplate voyaging to the Caribbean to try his luck over there.
Chances are, if he’d made the break and lived a colonial’s life in the sultry tropics, he’d not have produced such memorable poems and songs. Influenced by the Scottish makar tradition and espousing republicanism and traditional Scottish values, Burns is known as the “national poet of Scotland”. Sometimes dubbed a pre-Romantic, he wrote about farm life, local experiences, traditional culture and religious practices; his poems, rich in vernacular and full of emotion, influe
Burns Night 2021: how Scottish favourite haggis could have English roots telegraph.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from telegraph.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.