AS PART of the ongoing transformation of the Scottish capital into a Christmas theme park for tourists, Edinburgh Castle is undergoing the dubious honour of digital illumination a la Buckingham Palace, Diamond Jubilee era.

The city is making a blatant spectacle of itself, shining lights in our eyes while it lifts £20 notes from our pockets. In consigning us to the role of infantilised spectator, I’d steeled myself for yet another exercise in socially disengaged pseudo-Scottish self-branding, calculated with the cold cynicism of an RBS advert. Not quite, though.

With no live element other than security, we are simply treated to lights on cold stone walls and a spectacle laced with self-parody. Walter Scott, the true muse of this kind of thing, was introduced wryly as the original spin doctor, responsible for the great 19th-century fake of Scottish ceremonial tradition — an admission surprising in its honesty.