KING Olaf of Norway arrived in Edinburgh on Tuesday, October 17, 1962, to be greeted warmly by the Queen. The people who cheered him in Princes Street, Lothian Road, North Bridge and the High Street made up “the biggest assembly of people the capital had ever seen,”this newspaper reported. At a state banquet that night at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the Queen observed that “never in the last three-and-a-quarter centuries - never since 1603 - have we had the honour of entertaining here in state the royal head of a great, friendly nation.” The following morning saw the King receiving the Freedom of Edinburgh; and that night there were a fireworks display in Princes Street Gardens and a gala performance of Rob Roy at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, attended by the Queen, the Earl of Home and Princess Margaret. Glasgow put the flags out for Olaf on the Thursday. His engagements included a visit to the Gorbals-Hutchesontown redevelopment project, where a sizeable piece of a tenement at the corner of Waddell Street and Rutherglen Road was brought down. But it happened prematurely before the King’s car had halted. He and Lord Provost Jean Roberts thus had to seek shelter in a closemouth from the clouds of “traditional stour”, as the Herald had it, “while the window-hangers above strained dangerously for a glimpse of them.”