Victoria and Albert's Highland Fling

Tony Robinson visits the Cairngorms National Park to discover how Queen Victoria and Prince Albert helped to shape Scottish traditions and imagery such as tartan, bagpipes and caber tossing, and built their fantasy castle at Balmoral, in the Highland countryside that they fell in love with. Starting in Pitlochry, Tony traverses the Killiecrankie Pass, where the Jacobites won the Battle of Killiecrankie, before the British government suppressed the Highland way of life and banned tartan. Tony visits Blair Castle, where Victoria and Albert's life-long passion for the Highlands was aroused. In Glen Tilt's mighty hunting estates, Tony hears about Albert's lack of shooting prowess, and visits the extraordinary ballroom that the Duke of Fife created to showcase his collection of 2400 pairs of antlers. In Braemar, the Highland Games offer a nod to ancient local customs, but with a large dollop of 19th-century reimaging thrown in, before Tony reaches Balmoral and the fantasy castle that Albert built as his and Victoria's Highland escape, where they could escape the cares of State and pretend to be ordinary folk.