The triumph of Brand Scotland

Good luck booking a holiday in the Highlands next summer

In his highly entertaining history of alcohol and the British, Empire of Booze, Henry Jeffreys observed how one effect of the Napoleonic Wars was to make Scotland a popular destination for English holiday makers. What with the continent being isolated and everything, there weren’t many more exotic places for the richer, more adventurous traveller to visit.

The country was until then largely unknown to many people south of the border, something also true of its trademark drink. ‘Highland and lowland whisky in the early 19th century would have been a mystery to the majority of Englishmen,’ Jeffreys writes: ‘In the literature of the Georgian and early Victorian period it’s apparent that drinking whisky while in Scotland was the modern-day equivalent of licking hallucinogenic toads while in the Amazon or eating rancid whale in Iceland.’

The conflict with revolutionary France proved to be a great boost to Brand Scotland, and not just because of the limits it placed on rival destinations, but also for the dash that the Scots cut on the field. This culminated with a momentous scene in which ‘the Highland regiments dazzled the French when the Allied armies marched into Paris.’

Here they wowed both friends and enemies alike, and Sergeant Thomas Campbell of the Grenadier Company recalled how the Tsar even personally ‘examined my hose, gaiters, legs, and pinched my skin, thinking I wore something under my kilt, and had the curiosity to lift my kilt up to my navel, so that he might not be deceived.’ Thanks to the likes of the Black Watch and Gordon Highlanders, the Scots had arrived on the global stage, and no one would ever forget Die Damen aus der Hölle (Ladies from Hell) as German troops would later call Highlanders.

This period of upheaval and war – the birth pangs of true modernity - was marked by a growing craze for Highlandism, ‘a peculiar phenomenon where lowland Scotland, a predominantly settled mercantile society, took on the trappings of the Highlander as a way of differentiating themselves from Englishmen who they were now yoked to in the Union.’

Previously viewed as menacing, the Highlanders had been tamed by the defeat of the Jacobites and the Clearances that followed, making this once-feared Gaelic culture now safe for English speakers to adopt as their own. Much of this was driven by the romantic imagination of Edinburgh’s Walter Scott, who helped shape both Scottish national identity and the 19^th century resurgence of medievalism. Perhaps more than literature, however, Highlandism was boosted by the region’s most famous export - whisky. As Jeffreys writes: ‘The growth of Scotch coincided with the birth of Highlandism.’

The development of Brand Scotland was also helped by a man widely regarded as Britain’s greatest buffoon and waste of space, the former Prince Regent. Historian John Plumb described a hugely influential visit by the now George IV in 1822, where: ‘He paraded Edinburgh in the kilt, resplendent in the Royal Stuart tartan and flesh-coloured tights, and yet managed to keep his dignity. The Scots loved it! Quaintly enough, George IV had struck the future note of the monarchy... Be kilted! Be sporans! Be tartans! Riding up Princess Street... To the roaring cheers of loyal Scots, he was showing the way that the monarchy would have to go if it were to survive an industrial and democratic society.’

It was the start of a beautifully symbiotic relationship, with the Royal Family immersing themselves in Highlandism ever since, spending much of their summer holidays there and helping to project an ideal of a region famed for its dramatic countryside, castles, distilleries and golf courses. They’re not alone: Donald Trump, whose mother hailed from the Isle of Lewis, has a noted fondness for the old country, even if this is not always reciprocated, and no doubt many more of his compatriots will be making the pilgrimage in the coming year thanks to the country’s newest brand ambassadors. These are, of course, another occupying force of Scots, the fans of the national football team who followed their country’s brief recent appearance at World Cup.

The Scots in Boston marched as proudly as their ancestors. Their bagpipers serenaded the opposition. Some even turned up at a wedding. They came to watch the Boston Red Sox, which one local described as ‘the best thing that’s happened in years’. They attracted many neutrals, including a duck. Folk songs were written about them. Everyone loved them, even if some struggled to understand them.

The Boston Globe published a full-page letter thanking them. One local reported how Scotland fans leaving Boston was ‘almost like a day of mourning for the Americans’. After they left, Massachusetts State Senator Paul Feeney made an emotional farewell, thanking them for visiting children’s hospitals and donating money to local charities: ‘You’ve been great, courteous guests, you’ve been polite and you’ve been fun and I don’t want that to end.’ He invited them to return next year, by which time Glasgow will be twinned with Boston. Indeed, Scottish fans so impressed the Bostonians that the city changed its zoning laws, not an easy task in America. They may even have solved the fertility crisis. Indeed, the Tartan Army charm offensive in Boston has been so overwhelming that I half suspect it’s some sort of devious RICU operation.

I don’t recall a group of sports fans ever doing so much to further their country’s image abroad, a form of popular diplomacy that doesn’t have many parallels. And without sounding unpatriotic, I think it’s fair to say that fans of the England football team have not always been such noted brand ambassadors. This has material benefits, and the Tartan Army’s antics will certainly lead to an increase in tourism to their country, just as visitor numbers to Morocco rose significantly after their team’s performance in Qatar.

It’s not like they’re already short of tourists bringing the Almighty Dollar, and indeed I’m a huge admirer of how the Scots put national identity to its most benevolent and noble purpose: using it to milk wealthy Americans of their money. I was especially taken by this marketing when we took the Caledonian Sleeper a couple of years ago for a holiday which featured some breathtaking scenery (and, as you’d expect, incredible warmth from the locals). As a sign of how one contemporary Anglo-Scottish writer has done more to boost the national brand than anyone since Scott, my daughter informed me that when she told her classmates that we were going to the Highlands of Scotland, one replied: ‘oh cool, Hogwarts Land.’

It’s not bad

After a day in Glasgow’s beautiful city centre, we drove up to stay inside a Scottish Baronial house by Loch Lomond, followed by a drive through the dramatically beautiful Glencoe and then Ben Nevis, before heading to Skye. (The Scottish Tourist Board aren’t paying me for this, by the way, although I want to make it clear that I can absolutely be bought).

Hogwarts Land is not cheap, however, and homes on the Isle of Skye seemed to be about as expensive in May half-term as some villas in the south of France in summer. One reason, I learned, was that a huge proportion of hotel rooms and Airbnbs in the Highlands and Islands were occupied by American tourists, driving up prices. Fair play to them - it’s testimony to the clever branding of the country, especially notable at Loch Lomond and Stirling Castle where Scottish merch shops were doing great business selling kilts, flags and, most of all, whisky.

Indeed, Jeffreys points out how much of Brand Scotland was a creation of the whisky industry, a group of exceptionally cunning businessmen who mass marketed their country as a way of promoting their product. They sold a quaint and homely image of Scotland, ‘all of this colourful marketing [disguising] the fact that whisky was made using the latest technology. Distilleries pioneered electric lights, telephones, and later computers. Grain distilleries especially became mechanised. Scotch was as much part of Scotland’s transformations into one of the world’s foremost industrial powers as shipbuilding or steel. Whisky played a part in turning Scotland from a poverty-stricken backwater into an industrial giant.’ Always at the forefront of innovation, one whisky distillery commissioned the world’s first cinema advert in 1898.

The marketing of Brand Scotland even enabled the whisky barons to win over the French, normally loathe to let any produce of Britain touch their lips. ‘Today the French drink more Scotch than brandy,’ he writes: ‘In fact, France is and has been for a long time the single biggest export market for Scotch after America.’ India, where it is highly valued, is not far behind.

Scotch is today so world famous that any visitor from Britain wishing to impress foreign hosts will naturally choose a bottle as a gift, and anyone visiting this island will want to bring one home. I’m more confused as to how Tennent’s Super managed to become a sophisticated drink in Italy, whereas in England it is generally viewed as ‘tramp juice’. No doubt the 9 per cent beer will be de rigueur among Boston hipsters by this time next year.

As for anyone hoping to book a place in Scotland for the summer of 2027, good luck fighting off the American invasion.