Two historic buildings with no conceivable common thread have struck a deal to publicise each other and to exchange conservation expertise. One is the Scottish childhood home of the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, still owned by her family and in good repair. The other is about 4,500 miles (7,200km) long and is largely falling to bits.

The improbable twinning is the result of a visit to China by Jack McConnell, the First Minister of Scotland, to improve trade links between the two countries. What China gets is a promise that 200 Scottish school pupils will receive language lessons in Mandarin, an invitation to take up jobs in Scotland and promotional literature about the Great Wall available at Glamis.

What Scotland gets is the hope of a burgeoning tide of increasingly affluent Chinese tourists making for one of the oldest continuously inhabited stately homes in the country, encouraged by publicity handouts to all who visit the Great Wall.

If all that Glamis wanted was a deal with a big wall, they need only have talked to Hadrian’s people to the south. But that World Heritage Site lies within England, whose citizens are already well acquainted with their northern neighbour.

A spokesman for Hadrian’s Wall brushed off the snub. “We have had a long standing relationship with our Chinese wall colleagues for many years. We are also in partnership with other European organisations which conserve the northern frontier of the Roman Empire. Unlike Glamis, we already have a seat at the table of Unesco World Heritage Sites.”

David Adams, general manager of Glamis Castle, set in the rolling hills of Angus behind Dundee, said yesterday that Mr McConnell’s visit to China had been backed up by several bilateral visits between Angus council officials and their Chinese counterparts. He added: “This is a remarkable achievement for a comparatively small Scottish tourist destination to be connected to the largest visitor attraction on Earth.

“Within 20 years the World Tourist Organisation predicts that China will be the fourth-most-important market in terms of outbound tourist visitors, estimated at 100 million. One of the key reasons for this agreement is the way we at Glamis manage to balance the demands of the modern tourism market with the conservation of the fabric of one of the oldest continuously inhabited castles in Scotland.”

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