Blackwell's Bookshop Burns offerings for January

BLACKWELL BOOKSHOP EDINBURGH PRESENTS THIS JANUARY

Why not celebrate the New Year by coming along and enjoying
an event at Blackwell Bookshop Edinburgh. We have a mixture of evenings
planned for your pleasure throughout the year and with a free glass of wine or
juice available to all guests on arrival how can you refuse?

Our 2009 events program
begins this January with Patrick Scott Hogg and his work 'Robert
Burns: the Patriot Bard'.

PATRICK SCOTT HOGG – ROBERT BURNS: THE PATRIOT BARD

DATE: THURSDAY 22ND JANUARY

TIME: 6:15PM FOR A 6:30PM START.

Blackwell takes great pleasure in welcoming Patrick Scott Hogg the author
of ‘Robert Burns: The Patriot Bard’ to share with us this new biography on one of the greatest songwriters
of all time and to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Burn's birth.

This book explodes the myths about Scotland’s national
poet, replacing the ram-stam lad of popular cliche with the real, living Burns.
He is revealed as a Scottish patriot of the heart, an idealist who wished for
'Freedom and Liberty' for his beloved Scotland, but also a man who was
pragmatically a British patriot who risked his life for democratic reform.

In ‘Robert Burns: The Patriot
Bard’, the greatest of Scotland's poets is placed within
the true context of his times. He was a son of the Enlightenment, whose
inspiration came from both Scottish and English poets, the Glorious Revolution
of 1688, the American Revolution of Independence and the French Revolution of
1789.Burns is painted in his native colours as a highly complex,
hyper-intelligent writer in both prose and poetry, not the semi-confused
contradictory simpleton of previous biographies.

The real day-to-day Burns was irascible, stubborn-minded,
independent, controversial and opinionated. His voice was always in the
language of the people and his idealist vision of a better world lifted him
from being exclusively a patriotic Scottish and British poet to a poet of
humanity 'the world o'er'. Drawing from Burns' existing canon of poetry and
letters, plus some newly attributed works suppressed for over two centuries,
this life story is a roller-coaster narrative that charts the success and
untimely death of the real Robert Burns.

So please come along to enjoy a FREE tipple of
whisky and help us celebrate Burns Night and the 250th anniversary of
the birth of Scotland’s favourite bard.

This event is ticketed, but tickets are FREE.
Tickets are available from the front desk at Blackwell.

For more information please contact Claire Leach on
0131 622 8206 or [email protected]

Blackwell Bookshop

53-62 South Bridge

EH1 1YS