Inspired by me American and French Revolutions and moulded by the Scottish Enlightenment, Robert Burns was in several senses the first of the great Romantics. With a poet's insight and a shrewd sense of human drama, Robert Crawford outlines how Burns combined a childhood steeped in the peasant song-culture of rural Scotland with a consummate linguistic artistry to become not only the world's most popular love poet but also the controversial master poet of modern democracy.