Born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960, bestselling crime-writer Ian Rankin published the first Inspector Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses, in 1987. The Rebus books have now been translated into thirty-one languages and are bestsellers worldwide. Rankin has been awarded an OBE for services to literature, has won countless awards and presented his own television series. In 2007 he was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons.Robert Burns (1759–1796) was born in Ayrshire, one of seven children of a struggling tenant farmer. After his father’s death he leased his own farm at Mossgiel, where he began writing in earnest. His first volume of poems, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, was an immediate success but, despite his new fame, Burns continued as a farmer for most of his life, unable to gain financial security. He died prematurely of rheumatic heart disease.

Born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960, bestselling crime-writer Ian Rankin published the first Inspector Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses, in 1987. The Rebus books have now been translated into thirty-one languages and are bestsellers worldwide. Rankin has been awarded an OBE for services to literature, has won countless awards and presented his own television series. In 2007 he was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons.Robert Burns (1759–1796) was born in Ayrshire, one of seven children of a struggling tenant farmer. After his father’s death he leased his own farm at Mossgiel, where he began writing in earnest. His first volume of poems, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, was an immediate success but, despite his new fame, Burns continued as a farmer for most of his life, unable to gain financial security. He died prematurely of rheumatic heart disease.