While the bagpipes are the national instrument of Scotland, how global is their history? The first written account of someone playing the bagpipes was Nero in the first century - was he playing them while Rome burned? How do you explain the absence of she-pipers in their history? And who were the pipers responsible for the first case of Scottish Nationalist terrorism in the 1940s.
Guest: Richard McLauchlan, author of The Bagpipes: A Cultural History (Hurst)