"A fierce elegy to Britain’s past glories, this is a film to see again and again, if only because of Alec Guinness’s bold and vivid portrait of a rapidly tarnishing military hero. I am attached to it because I spent some of my two years’ service in the Royal Air Force at the Joint Services School for Linguists in Bodmin, Cornwall, not only with Navy and Royal Marines types but with soldiers from the endless list of British Army regiments, each with its fiercely prized individual identity, history, peculiarities of uniform, and traditions. No soldiers were more clanny or inbred than those of the fabled Scottish (kilted) Highland regiments, like the Black Watch, the Argyll & Sutherlands, or the Cameronians. The regiment in Tunes of Glory is like one of those, a small, enclosed world, and in it the rivalry between the brash and heroic young colonel and his replacement leads to a sad and messy tragedy. It is one of those brilliant “little” films that almost reaches greatness, and it remains, along with The Hill and Zulu, one of the iconic films about the British Army."