For 40 years Robin Crichton ran Edinburgh Film Studios and was one of Scotland's leading film producer/directors, specialising particularly in the international coproduction of films for cinema and TV. He served as Scottish Chairman and UK Vice Chairman of the Independent Programme Producers Association and latterly as coproduction project leader for the Council of Europe.
He studied social anthropology at Paris and Edinburgh Universities, undertaking fieldwork amongst American Indians and in a mountain village in Anatolia. At Edinburgh, he met and married his first wife Trish while she was doing an honours degree in archaeology. Political problems between Pakistan and China in the Hindu Kush led to the abandonment of their joint PHD and a change of career into filmmaking.
Widowed and retired, he is now remarried to Flora Maxwell Stuart and they divide their time between Traquair in the Scottish Borders and Belesta la Frontiere in the Pyrenees Orientales where he is President of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Association.
He is author of over 100 film scripts and his previous books include:
Who Is Santa Claus? - the story behind the legend. Canongate 1987.
Silent Mouse - the story behind the writing of Silent Night. Ladybird 1990.
Sara (bilingual French and English with Brigittte Aymard) - a story of a missing child and gypsies in the Camargue. Hachette 1996.
Monsieur Mackintosh (bilingual French and English) - C.R. Mackintosh's life as a painter in the Pyrenees Orientales 1923-27. Luath Press 2006.