Pipers from Oman tune up at yesterday’s rehearsals at Redford Barracks for the 2018 Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

EDINBURGH: 100 years of Royal Air Force marked as world descends on the capital

The centenary of the RAF will be central to celebrations at this year’s Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo which starts tomorrow.

The theme of the show is The Sky’s the Limit, with projections to be shone on to the Edinburgh Castle walls during performances.

Among the international performers will be the Royal Cavalry of the Sultanate of Oman’s Pipers on horseback and its all-female marching band.

The Courier was given a preview at Redford Barracks in Edinburgh yesterday as more than 1,200 cast and crew gave their first public run-through of this year’s spectacular show which will play out to an audience of 8,800 each evening – and millions more through subsequent TV audiences – running at Edinburgh Castle Esplanade until August 25.

Brigadier David Allfrey, chief executive and producer of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, said: “We are celebrating several big anniversaries.

“One is RAF100, there’s also Scotland’s Year of Young People – there’s an awful lot of young people involved.

“It’s also the 100th anniversary of the Czech Republic – we have their armed forces here – and it’s also the end of the 1914-18 war, leading up to the big 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War.”

Lance Sergeant John Mitchell, 25, of the 1st Battalion Scots Guards grew up in Fintry in Dundee.

The piper – a former pupil of Ancrum Road Primary and Harris Academy who joined the army when he was 15 – will have the honour of playing solo from the castle ramparts during the tattoo.

And award-winning dancer April Hunter, 24, from Arbroath, is a member of the Tattoo Dance Company who will be performing.

The former Arbroath High School pupil who has taken a career break from her job as a primary school teacher in Forfar to do more with the dance company overseas

Picture: Kris Miller.