Helen SpeirsHelen Speirs

Helen Speirs is a Dunedin journalist and writer. She was editor of the Allied Press Communities Division from 2007-2012, an Otago Daily Times senior editorial executive until the end of 2017, and is now a production journalist and leader writer for the NZ Herald, as well as freelancing. She was born in Dunedin in 1971.

Was Robbie Burns a rapist?

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Dunedin journalist Helen Speirs investigates a controversy swirling around Robbie Burns. Robert “Robbie” Burns, Scotland’s national poet, feted worldwide, author of “Auld Lang Syne”, commemorated in Dunedin with a handsome statue overlooking the Octagon, one of the immortals of literature – and, now, accused as a “sex pest”, a rapist, “Weinsteinian”. Scottish poet Liz Lochhead has unleashed a storm … Read more