JOHN CAIRNEY is well known to audiences in Scotland and internationally through his one-man shows about Burns. Indeed, in many minds he is synonymous with the Bard and is regarded as one of the leading interpreters of the works of Robert Burns.

In more than 50 years as an artist, he has worked as an actor, recitalist, lecturer, director and theatre consultant. He is also a published author and an exhibited painter. Trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, he was a notable Hamlet at the Citizens Theatre and a successful Macbeth at the Edinburgh Festival. He was also This Man Craig on television and has appeared in many films like Jason and the Argonauts and Cleopatra.

He gained a PhD from Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand and is much in demand as a lecturer, writer and consultant on Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Robert Burns. Dr Cairney has written books on each of these famous Scots, as well as other books on football, theatre and his native Glasgow, where he lives with his New Zealand wife, actress and scriptwriter, Alannah O’Sullivan.