A Walk in the Park: Exploring the Treasures of Glasgow''s Dear Green Places

About John Cairney

John Cairney BA MLITT PHD is a man of many parts actor writer painter and storyteller since beginning as an actor at the age of 17 with the Park Theatre Company in Glasgow in 1947. After National Service with the RAF in Germany he made his return to theatre training at the College of Drama in Glasgow. In a career that has lasted more than 60 years he has played Romeo Hamlet Macbeth Cyrano de Bergerac Robert Louis Stevenson William McGonagall and Ivor Novello but mainly he is remembered for his solo Robert Burns. This began in 1965 with Tom Wrights play There Was a Man which he performed at the Traverse Theatre Edinburgh and the Arts Theatre London. The play was televised twice recorded as an album for REL Records Edinburgh and produced as a video for Green Place Productions Glasgow. Cairney made many film and television appearances throughout the 1960s and 70s as well as writing and recording his own songs for EMI at Abbey Road in London. However his career has since been taken over by Burns with the only a two year break for BBC2s This Man Craig. The Burns trail brought him a good living extensive world travel good friends and his wife Alannah OSullivan the New Zealand actress and writer whom he married in 1980. After nearly 20 years of living in New Zealand the couple are now returned to Scotland. As well as his books on Burns Cairney has published 18 other titles including three volumes of autobiography two novels three football books a book of essays about Glasgow a book about theatre practice and another about solo performers. Cairneys paintings have been exhibited in New Zealand and in Scotland. His Nine Lives of Burns were shown at the Burns Birthplace Museum Alloway in 2012 and more recently his Stations of the Cross were displayed in Glasgow as part of the Lentfest Festival 2014 and at St Brides Church in Bothwell. His most recent project a series of paintings called The Marian Way was exhibited in St Patricks Church Glasgow during October 2015. John still finds time for solo appearances and book shows.