Every morning at nine o'clock, wherever the Queen was in residence, a piper in Highland dress played for exactly fifteen minutes beneath her window. The BBC's short 2021 profile of Pipe Major Paul Burns is a rare peek at a ritual most pipers know exists but almost none have witnessed.
Queen Victoria created the role of Piper to the Sovereign in 1843 after she was charmed by pipers she heard in the Highlands. Angus MacKay was her first appointment. The core duty has barely changed in almost two centuries: fifteen minutes of piping beneath the monarch's window each morning at nine, at whichever royal residence the Sovereign is occupying. Balmoral, Buckingham Palace, Holyrood, Sandringham. The ritual travels with the monarch.
This BBC News piece, published in September 2021, follows Pipe Major Paul Burns, who had recently been appointed. It is a short profile rather than a deep history, but it answers questions most pipers have never had anyone to ask. What tunes does the Piper actually play at nine? How is the repertoire chosen? How does a working pipe major end up in this role? What is it like to walk out onto a palace lawn and start droning?
For pipers, it is one of very few pieces of footage in which the morning ritual is actually shown and explained by the person performing it. For non-pipers who have wandered into your orbit and asked whether the Queen really had a personal piper, this is the four-minute answer.
Paul Burns continued as King's Piper into the reign of King Charles III after Queen Elizabeth II's death in 2022. The role, and its strange daily tempo, persists.
If the martial roots of that ceremonial role interest you, our essay on why the instrument is called a war pipe explains where the pipe-major tradition comes from. And if reading this leaves you curious about the pipes themselves, our New to Bagpipes pathway is where to start.