Following in the footsteps of Mary Queen of Scots on a royal retreat at Gleneagles

Childhood preconceptions can take years to shift, however wrong they might be. Two of mine, blown apart at the same time, were that Gleneagles hotel was a disappointment and that Mary Queen of Scots was a villain.

Having indulged in Gleneagles’ Mary Queen of Scots package – designed to coincide with the film opening this weekend starring Saoirse Ronan as Mary and Margot Robbie as Elizabeth I – my hazy presumptions about the recently revamped hotel and about the 6ft tall, vivacious yet doomed queen who was born nearby, were swept away.

My parents honeymooned at Gleneagles and always spoke of it with reverence, although my mother claimed she hardly saw my father, who was tempted away by golf and…