Star: Today, Burns would need to overcome anti-Scots prejudice

He is regarded as the most famous of all Scottish writers, the poet whose words are prized and shared as an expression of goodwill around the world.

Yet had Robert Burns been alive today, he’d have had to overcome anti-Scottish sentiment to have his words reach an audience.

That’s according to actor Alan Cumming, pictured, who is representing the Bar din a new production from the National Theatre of Scotland, which opened last week at the Edinburgh International Festival.

Perthshire-born Cumming, 57, leads a one-man show comprising spoken w ord, interpretive dance, original music and video compositions, reflecting the w orld and w orks of Burns.

Cumming describes the Ayrshire poet as a voice of the people, w ho articulated w hat he considers to be quintessentially Scottish characteristics, rejecting injustice and inequality. Yet had Burns’ w ords been published now , Cumming thinks they w ould have been lost to the prevailing w inds w hipped up by contemporary UK politics.

He said: “He w as a romantic figure in a romantic period and yet he’s not really accepted into that group of romantic poets because he w as w riting in Scots and not English. There’s that thing that w e are used to as Scottish people, of being slightly looked dow n upon. He had that as w ell. And it still happens now . Look at the head of the Scottish Conservatives being told he’s a ‘minor figure’ by Jacob Rees-Mogg.

“If you need to know how the political establishment looks dow n on Scotland, that’s exactly it right there. That’s the problem, and that still happens. And if it happens to right-w ing people like the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, then imagine w hat it is for regular w orking class people.”

Burn teams Cumming w ith choreographer Steven Hoggett, touring Scotland before being staged in New York later this year.