There is a lot of talk right now about what it means to be Scottish in the 21st Century, as the independence debate grinds on. One man, the Queen’s man in Edinburgh Castle, embraces a version of it which he says is embedded in the rocks and stones of that castle; in his name and in the office he holds stretching far beyond the 21st Century, nearly a thousand years into the 11th.
Major General Alastair Bruce OBE is the Governor of Edinburgh Castle and a direct descendant of King Robert the Bruce. As the first governor Bartolf Leslie, a warrior appointed sometime after 1067, he is also a proud Scottish soldier.
This is an essential distinction for General Alastair, formerly of the Scots Guards and a veteran of the 1982 Falklands War as, “The first duty of the Governor is to retain a link for all of Scotland with its military history,” he says.
“I’m very aware there is a great importance associated to the identity of Scotland with King Robert the Bruce, my ancestor.” But for all his high ancestral name and the formality of his job, he’s an engagingly informal man. A few minutes into the interview, we are both laughing over a Monty Python skit he has shown me regarding the nature of kingship.
Later, he recalls the fun of working as the historical advisor to the TV series Downton Abbey, set in the early 20th Century. He appears “as a butler twice, as an officer twice and as a random somebody else several times”, but really he was there for his expertise of protocol. He tells me with a smile, how that bumped up against the informality of overly-bubbly actors “You have to control actors because they just want to hug everybody”.
He says this was especially important because “In Downton Abbey time people didn’t touch each other. I used to have to explain why they didn’t. Now, people understand. The reason they didn’t is that they didn’t have antibiotics.”
TV has long been a part of General Alastair’s life. He is Scotland’s highest-ranking Army Reservist whose day job is journalism, commentating on royal events for Sky TV. “We all wear an anorak don’t we and my anorak is being interested in how people have traditionally managed the protocols of life.” It was that expertise in tradition and a compelling voice that landed him the role of Sky’s royal and events commentator, but he says that he discovered it was about more than just speaking the details. “Commentary is about learning how to be silent”. While working on the commentary for the funeral of Princess Diana, in 1997, broadcast worldwide by Sky, he told his producer beforehand he would say very little. “I like to stick to that because very often these events, particularly on television, narrate themselves”, he says. Ultimately this grows out of love for his nation and history, the same root as many of his endeavours.
“I don’t think I’d be any good at commentating if I weren’t passionately interested so much in the way the four parts of the United Kingdom have individually developed.”
And he loves no part so dearly and no people as much as Scotland and its soldiers. Under his command in the Falklands War, at age 21, were Scottish soldiers whom he calls “lions”.
Having been through the worst with these men he tells me that the Scottish military tradition “is the foundation stone that this castle is built on” He loves that, “The Scottish soldier is different because the Scottish soldier does not deliver deference. He’ll be respectful if he thinks you deserve it, but he won’t just blindly deliver deference. The Scottish soldier is, like his ancestors before him or her, deeply, deeply loyal to what they respect, so you’ve got to bloody well earn it.”
He never fails to return that respect. “If you take the privilege of a command, you have the responsibility of looking after soldiers and they are unendingly wonderful. They may behave very well or very badly but in the end, they are lions. The privilege of training them for war which is what we’re here to do and the characters that you get to know while you’re doing it are relationships that are as platonically loving as any relationships that can exist in the professional environment, I would imagine.”
But he long paid the price of being so close in such a dangerous profession. Loss of men under his command stayed with him since the Battle of Mount Tumbledown in the Falklands.
“Having trained soldiers for battle there is an agony of returning to Scotland without four of them”. This agony shows in the numerous paintings scattered around his office. Paintings of his own, showcasing many scenes from the Falkland Islands and the battlefields.
They are one part of how he has dealt with that past. This healing process has been going on since he came back. “I went to visit the families of my soldiers who had died, and I did my best to make it more understandable for them, more accessible because I have been to the place where these things happened. I’ve been amongst a group of people when it had happened, and I knew that I would face the spectrum of human emotions and I did. I felt cathartically better having done that. I felt it was the conclusion of my duty as a young officer who had trained these young men, some of them were my age or younger, some of them were older but none of them was very old.” He still regularly visits the graves and the cairn he erected in Sutherland for Guardsmen James Reynolds. The latter won the Distinguished Conduct Medal when he died saving the life of another soldier.
Before that war, General Alastair was a 20-year-old on peacekeeping duties in Northern Ireland. Having faced such extremes at a young age, he tells me it is precisely his age then that prepared him for it. ‘I think youth prepares you’ and you have it and I no longer have it. Youth makes you quite brave anyway. I no longer run along the top of railings and jump across significant gaps and avoid plummeting 30ft down to an untimely death because I’m not made like that anymore.”
But he loves the self-confidence of youth that does do those things.
“It’s the sense that you have when you’re younger than you are immortal. And that immortality is what makes young people experience and challenge themselves with all sorts of wonderful things and that’s what it’s for. That’s what university is for, challenging yourself and putting yourself outside your comfort zone.”
From his own early youth Alastair Bruce of Crionach has been doing that.
“When I was a boy brought up in Sutherland, I was encouraged by my father to learn about and understand the Bruce story because I was a part of it. I think that it wasn’t just laid in front of me as a series of events, but as a motivation to find my way. A way of serving Scotland and playing my part as a member of the family in the Scottish story.”
Image: Cpl Nick Johns RLC/ MoD Crown