Use the links in the listing below to find related items

   

Please read the HELP NOTE below for the best way to listen to this audio

Joseph Cook was a popular Inverness speaker who collected photographs on many subjects to illustrate his talks. In this audio extract, taken from a recorded slide show, the Reverend Derek Henderson of Inverness discusses one of Mr. Cook's images.

'And here of course, the centre piece of Inverness; the castle. Now there has been a castle on that mound since, I believe, since the eleventh century at least. Now, what they may have been - might have been wood or whatever - but there was always one there. The penultimate one was a very strong garrison. It was so strong that in 1746 Bonnie Prince Charlie decided it better be blown up in case the Hanoverians would get their hands on it. So he, or his lieutenants, instructed a French sergeant who had a little poodle dog to - and was expert with explosives - to blow the old castle up. Well, he did this, at least he set the charges, and the charges weren't going off and he thought that the fuses must have failed, and as he went near them they went on, and they blew him up! And story has it that he was blown across to where the Palace Hotel is now and killed, but his poodle dog survived'

Find out more about the photograph collector - Joseph Cook