Catherine Czerkawska

The Jewel is a luscious historical novel about Robert Burns’ wife, Jean Armour. It explores the dramatic years of their courtship in Mauchline, their married life at Ellisland and in Dumfries, and Robert’s early death, all against a background simmering with political turmoil.

Their relationship was passionate, tempestuous, and enduring against all odds, and its course reveals Jean’s indomitable strength. How she lived with, and frequently without, Scotland’s most famous son and why Jean was subsequently neglected in favour of more ‘romantic’ heroines is the subject of Catherine Czerkawska’s talk and reading.