We catch up with Robin Crichton of the Arthur Trail Association on a sunny afternoon at Traquair.
Watch his interview below, or read on…
“I have always been a storyteller. I started out as a social anthropologist and David Attenborough gave me some film stock and some rudimentary training before I made my first anthropological with a tribe of American Indians.
This was followed by other films in Anatolia and West Africa. A PhD in a remote part of the Hindu Kush was suddenly stopped by political unrest on the Turkestan frontier. But my films had been seen on television by Sir Arthur Elton, the great British documentarian who offered to take me on and give me a proper film training.
So, for the next forty years I told tales in many different forms in television with my own purpose-built studio and working largely abroad with international coproduction. Just before the millennium my wife and work-mate died and video and electronic production rapidly replaced film, so I retired, sold up and remarried.
We bought a house in the Eastern Pyrenees – a remote areas of France where Charles Rennie Mackintosh has spent the last four and probably the happiest years of his life. The local municipality asked me if I would start a Mackintosh Society. I agreed and for the Entente Cordiale, with grant from the Scottish government we mounted an exhibition which ran for 3 months and attracted over 5,000 visitors. The tourist industry was under-developed. It was an area that tourist rushed through on their way to Spain but did not stop.
The exhibition developed into trail with the sites of all his paintings marked with a reproduction from where he placed his easel. This was supported by three interpretation centres along the 100-mile route and an active cross cultural programme between France and Scotland. It took ten years to build it and it became and still is a major earner for the local economy.
With Brexit, it was going to be impossible to continue our bi-national lifestyle, so we returned permanently to our home at Traquair. The south of Scotland is also an area where the tourist traffic rushes through without stopping on the way to Edinburgh and the Highlands. Just as Mackintosh was long forgotten in the Pyrenees so was Merlin in Southern Scotland.
But Merlin was a much more internationally known figure and had an even greater potential to attract visitors to stop if there was something to see and to publicise.
So just before COVID we established a Merlin Trail marking all the key sites of the story, supported by a book and a website and a permanent exhibition in Moffat Museum.
The intention is to assess the historical and archaeological evidence as well as record local lore to explore the facts and the fake behind the story Merlin and present the evidence in a next-generation multi-media Visitor Centre which we estimate can attract an additional 200,000 visitors year and more than twice in the longer term.”
Robin Crichton
5 Responses
Hello, Robin, mine is a voice from a very distant past. We were students of Geography and Anthropology in 1961.. We went often to the Pentlands on Icelandic ponies which I really loved. I recall your dog getting a drink from a loo regularly in the Geography Drpartmrnt! I married,have a daughter and 3 grandchildren. Trained as a Pdychoanslytic Psychotherapist at the Tavi and am about to retire. We almost settled in the South of France delighted by the gorgeous Pyrenees. My daughter and family had a lovely Maison de Maitre in Siran. We all now live in Oxfordshire. Oldest Grandchild is reading architecture at Bath, I remember your first wife who was very beautiful . I miss Scotland and totally agree that people lose seeing Galloway through heading for Edinburgh and the same with regard to the Siran area
of Southern France. Have always been rather pleased that SW Scotland is not much known.
What a wonderfully varied and interesting life you have led,
I came across your website by chance.
My husband died of cancer 8 years ago. We always had Labradors and I have two, mother snd daughter who are very entertaining and companionable.
Have enjoyed reading about your many amazing projects,
Katharine Carling (Clarkson)
By chance I saw your message to Robin Crichton, and there are a handful of coincidences: I shared a flat with Trish, his first wife until they married; she had been the first person I met in Edinburgh and we did Archaeology together. I married Roy Ashworth (whom I met doing Physical Geography); we went to their silver wedding in Nine Mile Burn. After living in Kenya, London, Malaysia, we also bought a house in the foothills of the central Pyrenees, near Mirepoix. Sadly we also sold up five years ago: Treziers me manque. I have a niece, Sasha Murray, reading Architecture at Bath U, though on work experiene with Fosters at present, and have 3 grand-daughters, the youngest of whom lives with us in Devon. A brother lives in Oxford. Best wishes, Georgina Asworth (Murray).
Great to stumble upon this article and see you looking well and very much engaged with still being creative. We were a band of photography students from Napier, accompanied by Don Mcallester our lecturer, who spent a week or so learning about film at Nine Mile Burn. What a fun and interesting time that was playing around attempting to use an Arriflex camera (huge compared to a Nikon). We made little films and were our own actors. You brought in the actors Russell Hunter (who chain smoked his way through) and Ian Cuthbertson, of ‘The Railway Children’ fame, to talk to us. Your lovely wife Trish made us all soup and salami sandwiches for lunch every day. What a happy interlude it all was. All the best to you with your Merlin project.
Hello Robin
Would you by chance know where to obtain a copy of the Moonacre TV Series from 1994?
I believe you were involved with this project, like many programs of its era it is now difficult to find in the saturation of the streaming age. My teenaged daughter has been seeking the series.
Regards
Aden Shillito
Auckland, New Zealand
I recall being a student going to lectures in the Old Quad when Robin used to ride in to class, tie up his horse and bring the dog into the lecture hall. We became friends because of the animals which I loved! I was thrilled to be invited out to his caravan to see the new puppies, there was much amusement among my friends because of that scenario!
It is wonderful to read of Robin’s success in film making!
Happy Days in the early sixties! Norma Macdonald