Richard McLauchlan (10:30 BST)

History’s first named bagpiper performed ‘with a bag tucked under his armpit’. He was the Roman Emperor Nero. Since then, this strange animal-like conflation of bag and sticks has become the world’s most beloved and contested instrument. Another piping emperor, Tsar Peter the Great, decided that his departed pet bear would live on - as a bagpipe.

Biographer and former Pipe Major Richard McLauchlan’s vivid history tells the long story of an instrument boasting over 130 varieties, yet commonly associated with just one, from one country: Scotland’s Great Highland Bagpipe. Telling anecdotes abound, such as the piper who played troops into battle at Waterloo and his great-grandson doing the same 100 years later at the Battle of the Somme. He brings the story up-to-date with the rise of women pipers and the way in which a ‘national instrument’ can shift in meaning amidst the currents of identity.

No event like this would be complete without hearing the pipes, and there will be a short live performance.

“’The Lament for the Children’ was the greatest single line of music ever written.” Yehudi Menuhin

In conversation with Michael Malone

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