A rose by any other name....

George IV's visit to Scotland in 1822 could not have been busier, or had longer term effects on the whole heritage business - for example the popularisation of tartan and highland dress. But one of the lesser known things he did while here was to bestow a Royal Warrant on the Observatory. Of course, at that time this building didn't exist. The Observatory then stood on Calton Hill.

The bit I would have liked to have seen was how the wire was strung from there all the way to the castle to make sure that the one o'clock gun went off with astronomical accuracy. Also the time ball that fell down the pole on the Nelson Monument, so that the captains of ships in Leith could watch through telescopes and check their chronometers.

We almost lost the lot in the 1880's through a lack of government funding (!), but the Royal Observatory was saved by the Earl of Crawford who built the new home on the top of Blackford Hill. It has contributed greatly to astronomical research for centuries.

And the message still goes from there to the time-ball on Calton Hill, and the castle.

For an old traditionalist such as I, there was almost a sad loss in the 1990's when the arrangements for astronomy underwent massive review. For a moment it looked as if we might lose the Astronomer Royal - but the title has survived, even although it is now purely Honorary. Directors have taken their place.

I like a world where you can say - "that chap over there is the Astronomer Royal" - it rolls off the tongue. By the same token, I know the man who was the previous Lord Lyon King of Arms, and is now Angus Herald Extraordinary!

Oh, but that is all trumped because once in a trattoria near the Pantheon in Rome we had coffee after supper with the "Clerk of the Closet in the Ecclesiastical Household of the Royal Household of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom." But that's another story!

You couldn't write the script could you? Not even Anthony Trollope could equal such bizarre stuff out of real life! And it means not a thing of course - but it is wonderfully poetic and euphonious. And life might be duller.....