On battle station

Published on 20/02/2013 19:46

I am proud, for once, to stand shoulder to shoulder with Alex Orr (Letters, 20 February) to ask the National Museums of Scotland to mount an exhibition to commemorate the Battle of Flodden, to celebrate the unlikely and telling victory of an outnumbered, out-gunned English army on 9 September, 1513, led by an old man, over the Scottish host – Murrayfield can feel a bit like that at times. Many hold that it also marked a victory of stupidity over common sense; rather a battle lost than a battle won, but let’s not go there.

Aytoun, that most under-rated of Scottish poets, wrote a marvellous verse on the return of the thrashed Scots army to ­Edinburgh; I am always – almost – moved to tears whenever I take it up to the old Parliament Hall, to read it in the room in which it is set.

I shall do it again the day after the 500th anniversary of the battle, if the Parliament Hall is open to the public, and Mr Orr is more than welcome to join me.

David Fiddimore

Calton Road

Edinburgh