The Edinburgh Military Tattoo
FIND OUT WHAT MAKES THE ANNUAL TATTOO SUCH AN EXCITING, VIBRANT AND
PRESTIGIOUS EVENT, WITH CHARLES DOUGLAS
For fifty-two years the Edinburgh Tattoo has thrilled and dazzled visitors to Scotland’s capital, not to mention the Scots who loyally turn out every August with their families to watch the spectacle.
Yet this extraordinary event, which this year sold out before it had even started, all began with a series of military displays enacted at the castle and in Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens as part of an outdoor entertainment promoted by the Corporation of the City of Edinburgh and
entitled ‘There’s something about a Soldier.’
The man chosen to produce these displays was Lieutenant-Colonel George Malcolm of Poltalloch, in Argyll, a Highland laird and war hero, fresh from orchestrating a widely applauded military display at Kelvin Hall in Glasgow. The Director assigned by the Army to work with him was Lieutenant-Colonel Alistair Maclean, later Brigadier. When Brigadier Maclean took over as Producer in 1953, he was effectively to transform the Edinburgh Military Tattoo into a spectacle which not only achieved international recognition, but was to inspire a whole series of Tattoos
around the world, notably in Copenhagen and Nova Scotia.
However, on the occasion of an initial pageant in 1948, the programme featured music by the Royal Scots and Highland Light Infantry (The City of Glasgow Regiment). Community singing took place at the beginning of each performance and there were displays of precision and agility
from The Royal Scots, as well as demonstrations of Scottish danci.....
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By Charles Douglas
Section : Scottish Events
Page number : 34
