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- Billy Kay (born 1951) is a Scottish writer, broadcaster and language activist. He developed an early interest in language, studying English, French, German and Russian at Kilmarnock Academy and English literature at the University of Edinburgh. His study of the history and status of the Scots language, Scots: The Mither Tongue, his most notable work, was later adapted for a television series, and an audiobook, recorded after setting up a home studio during the COVID-19 lockdown. Kay thought that many people would not have heard ' how the language sounds' in major Scots literature such as Barbour's Brus, R.L. Stevenson's Thrawn Janet, works by MacDiarmid and Burns or the Border Ballads covered in his book: a sound version, he said, would 'fill a big gap' in people's 'knowledge and appreciation of a great tradition'. (en)
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