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Edinburgh Military Tattoo
MANY HAPPY RETURNS TO THE ROYAL EDINBURGH MILITARY TATTOO (EVEN IF YOU CAN’T JOIN THE PARTY THIS YEAR)
EDINBURGH in August. Or rather, Edinburgh this August. No Edinburgh International Festival, no Fringe, no Book Festival, no flyering on the Royal Mile, no tents on the Meadows and Bristo Square. No comedians in the Pleasance Courtyard (apart maybe from Arthur Smith), no Oxbridge student revues, no BBC broadcasters on a jolly up from London, no Fringe brochures in every shop, no literary star-spotting around Charlotte Square.
And no Tattoo. Or rather no Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, to give the event its official name. Which means no temporary stands built up around Edinburgh Castle’s esplanade, no soldiers marching, no massed pipe and drums, no nightly fireworks, no royalty, British or otherwise, no incongruous celebrities (David Hasselhoff of all people turned up in 2012), no BMX bikers, no gymnasts, no RAF police dogs or even RAF flyovers, and no lone piper on the castle ramparts.
For the first time in its 70-year history the Tattoo has been cancelled. In March, Brigadier David Allfrey, Chief Executive and Producer of the Tattoo, who was set to step down after this year’s show, had initially been bullish about carrying on, but by the start of April the true scale of disruption Covid-19 was going to cause was becoming clear.
“Of course, it’s not been easy,” admits Rucelle Soutar, the chief operating officer of the Tattoo. “We were incredibly disappointed to have to cancel our 70th year celebrations. However, the safety of our team, performers and audiences will always be paramount. The current circumstances are unique.”
There are plans to commemorate the anniversary but there will be no big party at the castle. It will just have to rely on memories this year. Still, there are plenty of those.
An event that has grown from modest beginnings (it cost just £200 to stage in its second year proper back in 1951) to a multimillion-pound endeavour that regularly welcomes participants from Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas. Guests too.
And that’s before you add the 100 million (give or take) who watch it on the telly around the world.
The story of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo (it was only given the Royal legend in 2010 to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee) stretches back to 1949 when a show entitled Something About a Soldier was performed at the Ross Bandstand in Princes Gardens below the castle.
The show was produced by Lieutenant Colonel George Malcolm of Poltalloch. He was also responsible for another show, The King’s Men, on the Castle Esplanade the same year.
In their wake, the then Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Sir Andrew Murray, invited the General Officer Commanding the Army in Scotland to present a military show which would be called the Edinburgh Tattoo (a reference to a Dutch phase for a signal made by drummers or trumpeters to tell taverns to stop serving and soldiers to return to barracks). It was an attempt, as Brigadier
Allfrey pointed out in 2018, to “drag Edinburgh out of the dark days beyond the Second World War”.
A year later the first Tattoo proper, produced by Lieutenant Colonel George Malcolm, was held, attracting 100,000 visitors over 20 performances, including the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret. The tradition of fireworks began that year, too. In 1951, audience numbers rose to 160,000 and the event was televised for the first time.
In the years (and decades) that followed, the event has gone from strength to strength, attracting military bands from near and far to perform, although, perhaps understandably, it would take until well after the fall of the Iron Curtain before Russians were invited to take part.
That came in 1998 when the Central Band of the Russian Navy performed at the Tattoo.
Russians apart, the Tattoo has attracted royalty and celebrities in equal measure. By the mid-1960s stars such as Douglas Fairbanks Junior and Googie Withers were coming to watch. In the years since everyone from Sean Connery to Ewan McGregor have attended.
The 1960s also saw some Tattoo
traditions become firmly established. Broadcaster Tom Fleming covered the event for the first time for television in 1966 and he would continue to do so every year after for more than four decades.
Still, it would take more than a decade, until 1977 in fact, the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, before officer cadet
Elaine Marnoch became the first female lone piper.
If anything, the Tattoo has become increasingly popular over the decades. After all, it wasn’t until 1999 that it became a sellout event. But it has been one ever since.
Over the years the Tattoo has adopted new developments in lighting, sound and more recently digital technology in a bid to stay up-to-date and relevant.
“If we were just putting on military bands marching up and down that wouldn’t fulfil the modern audience’s expectation,” Brigadier Allfrey pointed out in a newspaper interview in 2018, “so we’re constantly ‘pushing on the elastic of innovation’, holding our older and traditional audience but at the same time trying to appeal to younger generations who actually consume large-scale live music events.”
In the 21st century there have been no shortage of events to commemorate. In 2005, the Tattoo marked the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar and 60 years since the end of the Second World War. In 2014, the centenary of the beginning of the First World War was marked.
Four years later, it was the centenary of the RAF in 2018 that was celebrated. And last year the Tattoo commemorated the 70th anniversary of NATO.
The misfortune is that the Tattoo cannot mark its own 70th birthday this month. But maybe that just means all the more cake for everyone next year.