Crowned Triumph

RODDY MARTINE EXAMINES THE INTERNATIONAL SUCCESS OF TELEVISION SERIES MONARCH OF THE GLEN, WHICH HAS REVITALISED THE MID-HIGHLANDS REGION

The castle on the far side of the loch as you drive west on the A89 from Laggan to Spean Bridge in Inverness-shire looks strangely familiar. But then most likely you will have missed the earlier sign informing all visitors to the area that this is ‘Monarch of the Glen Country'. Although the owners had originally hoped to keep its identity a well-kept secret, the castle is, in fact, Ardverikie, whose doppelgänger is Glenbogle Castle, fictional backdrop for one of BBC Scotland's most successful television series ever.

Of course, when Sir Compton Mackenzie, that flamboyant figure of the 20th century Anglo-Saxon literary world first published the book of that name in 1941, it was a very different Scottish Highlands to the one depicted in today's television soap.

For a start, Mackenzie's MacDonald of Ben Nevis was a big, beefy chap who waged war on hikers and hill-walkers and locked them up in his castle dungeons. Today's clan chieftain would never get away with that sort of behaviour, but then young Archie MacDonald has to contend with all the problems that beset a modern landowner in the Scottish Highlands – bank overdrafts, unsympathetic bureaucrats, dry rot, falling livestock values, leaking roofs, midges and bolshie land reformers.

It was something of a gamble when Ecosse Films, fronted by its talented Executive Producer Douglas Rae, came up with the idea. Having already won plaudits for the film Mrs Brown, starring Dame Judi Dench and Billy Connolly, Rae began sea...

To read the rest of this article you can do any of the following.

• By : Roddy Martine
• In : Contemporary Scotland
• Issue : 5
• Page : 14
• Words : 908