Robert Burns is somehow invincible. In recent years a slew of critics have attempted to shoggle the Ayrshire Bard off his pedestal: Liz Lochhead has called him “very Weinsteinian”, Stuart Kelly has argued that he may have been a rapist, and his links to enslavement have come under the spotlight, leading to accusations of racism. His status, meanwhile, has barely changed.
For every article drawing attention to Burns’s flaws, another three articles pop up across the aisle protesting outrage at any attempt to judge an 18th-century poet against 21st-century standards.
