The Times titillates with a headline today designed to cast doubt on the basis for Scots’ love for Robert Burns. There is nothing there. In short, direct or indirect economic benefit from Caribbean slavery was widespread among the artistic, collecting, and intellectual classes of the period. Burns’ case—an abandoned plan in period of despair with no material outcome is nothing of substance by comparison with the documented ownership, inheritance, investment, and patronage links of figures such as Beckford, Turner, Raeburn, and Reynolds. Many of us will look back with sadness, perhaps shame, at episodes in our lives or of those … Continue reading Burns had no connection to the slave trade and wrote the most powerful words against it