“As a child, I was always intrigued by the question: what is it that distinguishes a city from a town? Is it size? Population? Location? When I asked grown-ups, the confident answer was that a city has to have a cathedral - which, to a child raised in a devout Catholic setting, made sense.”

Scottish writer

John Burnside was a Scottish writer, known for his poetry and for the recognition his work received in major literary prizes. He was one of four poets to win both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for a single collection, Black Cat Bone, in 2011. In 2023, he received the David Cohen Prize for his body of work.