The jewel

A luscious historical novel, The Jewel brings to glorious life the dramatic years of Jean Armour and Robert Burns's courtship, and their tempestuous, passionate married life, against a background simmering with political intrigue and turmoil.

Jean, a beautiful young woman with the voice of a nightingale, set young Rab's heart aflame from the first.

Jean's father tried to protect her from the advances of the mercurial ploughman-poet, whose roving eye was notorious.

But she would not be kept from him. Their marriage endured against all odds, its rocky course revealing Jean's indomitable strength and character.

How Jean lived with - and frequently without - her famous husband is surely Scotland's greatest love story.