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Robin A Crawford

@robincraw.bsky.social
90 followers 149 following 44 posts

Author & bookseller Fife, Scotland Out now: The Sound of Many Waters, A Journey Along the River Tay Birlinn Previously: Into The Peatlands 2018 Birlinn, Cauld Blasts and Clishmaclavers 2020 Elliott & Thompson robinacrawford.com

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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
At the Ferry Join me if you can at Broughty Ferry library 7:00pm on 30th September.
robinacrawford.com
At the Ferry
Join me if you can at Broughty Ferry library 7:00pm on 30th September.
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Paperback out now. Just some of the books that inspired my journey.
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Join me at the Dundee Book Festival on the 20th June for the launch of the paperback of The Sound of Many Waters. #DundeeBookFestival #BookSky Details here: dundeebookfestival.com/product/robi...
dundeebookfestival.com
Robin A. Crawford The Sound of Many Waters
Celebrate The Sound of Many Waters at Dundee Book Festival as Robin Crawford explores the River Tay’s history, landscape and lasting cultural legacy.
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
To celebrate #LàAbairtNaGàidhlig #SayAGaelicPhraseDay from ‘The Sound of Many Waters’: ….flicking through a copy of Perthshire Gaelic in the clearance box in a local bookshop I come across a warning: ‘tàlaidhidh am biadh fiadh na beinne’ – ‘hunger makes the wolf come out of the woods’.
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Reposted by Robin A Crawford
Seachdain na Gàidhlig (World Gaelic Week) @sngaidhlig.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
Bheil thu deiseil airson Là Abairt na Gàidhlig a-màireach? // Are you ready for Say a Gaelic Phrase Day tomorrow? #SeachdainNaGàidhlig2026 #LàAbairtNaGàidhlig #SayAGaelicPhraseDay
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
Preorder ‘The Sound of Many Waters’ paperback edition at Waterstones and receive 25% off enter “FEB26” at the checkout to redeem the offer to receive 25% off RRP www.waterstones.com/campaign/feb... #WPreorder
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
Fascinating conference yesterday discussing peatland restoration in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Éire. Delighted to be invited to take part in panel discussion and venture out again into the peatlands. Footprints- human, carbon, corncrake preserved out on the moor.
Frontispiece illustration from my book 'Into The Peatlands' showing human footprints -shod and unshod- over time preserved at the foot of a stratified peat bank.
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Reposted by Robin A Crawford
Kirsty Lilley @kirstylilley.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
Weekly dose of inspiration from yesterday’s conference on #peatlands, co-hosted by the Consulate General for Ireland, UoE, ECCI, and @crossborder.bsky.social - highlighting amazing and ongoing collaborations across the arts/humanities and sciences, and the impact of research across borders
A conference room with an opening slide for the Peatlands Restoration Conference, co-organised by the Consulate General of Ireland, the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute, the University of Edinburgh, and the Centre for Cross Border Cooperation.
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
Happy Birthday!
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
Thank you to everyone who came along yesterday, lovely to share Tay stories with you. Thank you for buying so many copies if my book! And a huge thank you to Fiona and the Blackness librarians for organising and making me so welcome.
Painting by Dundee artist James Macintosh Patrick 1940. View towards Blackness from his window with Monday washing on line in November garden. Apple tree still fruiting. Little girl in picture now 87
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Reposted by Robin A Crawford
Scottish Book Trust @scottishbooktrust.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
Book Week Scotland is friendship woven through words. ❤📚 Whatever you are doing to celebrate, from going along to one of hundreds of events to reading a brilliant book at home, we wish you a happy Book Week Scotland! 📚🥳
A poster advertising Book Week Scotland with the slogan 'friendship woven through words'. The dates are 17–23 November.
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
Wee 50 word piece on friendship published for @scottishbooktrust.bsky.social #BookWeekScotland It’s the one beginning “Friends are the ones that you enjoy the bitterest of arguments with.” My friend is delighted with the “contains strong language” warning! www.scottishbooktrust.com/scotlands-st...
scottishbooktrust.com
50 Word Non-Fiction: Friendship – Batch 2 by Various Authors
Every year, we ask people from all over Scotland to share their true stories with us
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
Delighted to be talking about my journey along the River Tay at Blackness, my local library when I lived on Windsor Street. #bookweekscotland #bookweekscotland25 #dundee #bookevent Book places here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/robin-craw...
eventbrite.co.uk
Robin Crawford - Author Talk
Join us for a lively chat with author Robin Crawford as he shares stories and insights about nature and the River Tay.
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Reposted by Robin A Crawford
Saraband Books @saraband-books.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
We're delighted to announce that we'll be publishing 'predominant nature writer' Jim Crumley's latest book, Symphonic: Harmony in Nature and Why It Matters ✨ Read more here: saraband.net/2025/09/17/s... #Booksky 📚💙
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
Thank you to Frazer and everyone who came along to the reading last night. It was a lovely evening. I particularly liked the cross, small schoolboy who came in during the talk to say to his mum in the audience ”You’ve got the key of the house!”
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
A tryst/a ceilidh. “On the bridge over the Inchewan Burn that separates Little Dunkeld from Birnam a plaque marks the traditional boundary of the Highland Gaelic and Lowland Scots languages: allt/burn, Uisge Tatha/River Tay.“ Be braw to meet you at The Birnam Reader Bookshop next Thursday. #BookSky
Event at the Birnam Reader Bookshop, 7:30 pm on Thursday 11th September. Station Rd, Birnam, Dunkeld PH8 0DS
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 30/08/2025
Thank you to readers, supporters, browsers and friends who came on Thursday evening and made the evening so special not least my bookselling colleagues. Extremely touched.
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 30/08/2025
Waving not drowning. “Hold up your hand… if the Tay is the index finger, imagine your thumb as the Isla, flowing in from the east, your middle finger the rivers Garry and Tummel from the north, and from the west the ring finger represents the Braan and the Almond, your pinkie the Earn.” #booksky
Audience at event in Toppings bookshop, St Andrews, Scotland for launch of ‘The Sound of Many Waters’ raise their hands to map the river Tay and its main tributaries.
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 24/08/2025
Having introduced so many authors as a bookseller I’m looking forward to the official launch of my own book #TheSoundOfManyWaters in the bookshop on Thursday. Do join me if you can. 7:30pm www.toppingbooks.co.uk/events/st-an...
toppingbooks.co.uk
Robin A. Crawford on The Sound of Many Waters: A Journey alog the River Tay at Topping & Company Booksellers of St Andrews
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
The reviewer does not only inform the reader but can inspire further creativity:- “I am browsing the weekend papers, the ‘Culture’ pages, reading the reviews…
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
Thank you @blackwells.bsky.social #Edinburgh for your -double- support of #TheSoundOfManyWaters much appreciated. My dad and I used to love discovering wonderful books in all the neuks of the old James Thin’s and it was a real pleasure revisit the South Bridge bookshop with my own son today.
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
Reviews for ‘The Sound of Many Waters’ Travel through time and space along Scotland's longest river Robin A Crawford's account of walking the Tay from source to sea is like having a local show you around their home river. In 2019, the historian and long-distance kayaker David Gange wrote a book…
robinacrawford.com
Reviews for ‘The Sound of Many Waters’
Travel through time and space along Scotland's longest river Robin A Crawford's account of walking the Tay from source to sea is like having a local show you around their home river. In 2019, the historian and long-distance kayaker David Gange wrote a book called The Frayed Atlantic Edge, which encouraged readers to think about both the history and geography of the British Isles in a completely new way.
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
Thank you to Roger Cox for his kind and understanding review of #TheSoundofManyWaters in @scotsman.com on Saturday. Thank you for getting it! Extremely touched for my book to be mentioned in the exalted company of #DavidGange and @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/ou...
scotsman.com
The Sound of Many Waters by Robin A Crawford review: 'Puts the Tay at the heart of Scotland's story'
Robin A Crawford’s account of walking the Tay from source to sea is an engaging journey through both time and space, writes Roger Cox
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
Do please join me at @waterstones.bsky.social #Dundee on 21st August. “Under Waterstones on Commercial Street… a tide line five feet from the floor encircles the basement offices and storerooms, marking a Tay flood 15 years ago.” Wellies optional. www.waterstones.com/events/in-co...
waterstones.com
In Conversation with Robin Crawford | Events at Waterstones Bookshops | Waterstones
Events at Waterstones get you closer to the books and authors you admire most. Find information and tickets about In Conversation with Robin Crawford today.
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 02/08/2025
…have your heartstrings tugged by the emotional stories of peoples sufferings, soar with the reading of the beautiful poem but when the anti-semitic chants start that is when you leave.
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 02/08/2025
…you had not considered or challenges one you thought you were firm on, ponder on those who make a counter-argument to your pre-conceived ideas, forebear the trite, the trendy, the populist, greet with a wry smile the old saws rehashed from the demos of your youth- “hello pal, awright?”-…
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 02/08/2025
…you most agree with, clap (or if one hand is holding a placard you shoogle it up and down) to show your approval of pertinent points, nod if someone makes a good argument for a view you had not considered or challenges one you thought you were firm on, ponder on those who make a counter-argument…
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 02/08/2025
Of course by attending such a demo you are at the mercy of your fellow demonstrators. Yes, you are anti-Trump but we are each against him in our own individual ways. You admire the banners: that’s a good one, yes, very funny, ouch, naw that’s just rude, that apostrophe! You cheer the speakers that…
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 02/08/2025
The source of the placard from my book ‘Cauld Blasts and Clishmaclavers’
From the introductionRoaster definition from Trump’s 2018 Scotland trip
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
Went to the Anti-Trump demo in Aberdeen last Saturday
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 26/07/2025
@aliciabruce.bsky.social taking portraits of all of today’s placard and banner makers- continuing her work photographic reportage of Trumps impact on Aberdeenshire started in her brilliant book I Burn But Am Not Consumed. Available here: www.toppingbooks.co.uk/books/alicia...
toppingbooks.co.uk
I Burn But Am Not Consumed: Menie, a portrait of a Scottish Coastal Community in Conflict by Alicia Bruce
I Burn But I Am Not Consumed brings together photographs and an archive collated by photographer Alicia Bruce and the residents of Menie, Scotland. The project documents sixteen years of Donald Trump’...
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 26/07/2025
@ukstoptrump.bsky.social in Aberdeen
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 23/07/2025
Thank you to booksellers Euan, Nick and Richard @waterstones.bsky.social #Perth for your kind welcome and continued warm support of ‘The Sound of Many Waters’, very much appreciated.
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
Thank you to #BBCScotland and Connie for inviting me on today to talk about the river Tay and ‘The Sound of Many Waters’. You can listen here, begins at 10:13 - www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
bbc.co.uk
Mornings - with Connie McLaughlin - BBC Sounds
Connie McLaughlin gets to the heart of the stories making the news.
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
Publication day! A river book has many sources. It begins in clouds blown in from far out on the ocean, deposited on mountain top as snow, in sheets of rain on bleak moors, rises up from deep underground caverns. Twists of circumstance, of fate direct its journey. Such vagaries shape its words…
robinacrawford.com
Publication day!
A river book has many sources. It begins in clouds blown in from far out on the ocean, deposited on mountain top as snow, in sheets of rain on bleak moors, rises up from deep underground caverns. Twists of circumstance, of fate direct its journey. Such vagaries shape its words reflecting the creatures, the plants, the people who live and die in it, on it, by it.
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
Thank you to Jon at @littletollerbooks.bsky.social for publishing this: www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing...
littletoller.co.uk
Flotsam by Robin Crawford
In this new essay for The Clearing, the author Robin Crawford considers what's left behind by the river Tay: in nature and human history.
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
What We’re Reading My dear bookshop colleagues have started updating our ‘What We’re Reading ‘ blackboard today…
robinacrawford.com
What We’re Reading
My dear bookshop colleagues have started updating our ‘What We’re Reading ‘ blackboard today…
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
Exclusive Toppings fish/ladder stamped signed 1st editions here: www.toppingbooks.co.uk/books/robin-...
toppingbooks.co.uk
The Sound of Many Waters: A Journey Along the River Tay by Robin A. Crawford
With the widest catchment area of any river in Britain, the Tay drains much of the lower Highlands of Scotland. A vast network of lochs and smaller bodies of water feed the rivers Isla, Garry, Tummel,...
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
Landing in bookshops now. Thank you to my colleagues at Topping & Company in StAndrews and Edinburgh for making it special.
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
Topping up my holiday reading with Arturo’s Island by Elsa Morante from @pushkinpress.com bought at Nutrimenti bookshop, island of Procida in the Bay of Naples.
Procida ferry‘The Buried City’ by Gabriel Zuchtriegel, @hodderbooks.bsky.social 
Italo Calvino ‘The Narrative of Trajan’s Column’, Letters of Pliny the Younger, Seneca ‘On the shortness of life’. @penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
Birnam wood, Glamis, Dunsinane all lie within the River Tay’s catchment. Read more here: robinacrawford.com/2025/06/05/t...
robinacrawford.com
The Sound of Many Waters 5
Macbeth’s oak, Birnam MacBeth was king of Scotland from 1040-1057. This ancient tree on the banks of the Tay at Birnam is associated with him. If not planted when the real MacBeth was king, i…
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
Birnam, Glamis, Dunsinane- all lie within the rivet Tay’s catchment. Read more here. robinacrawford.com/2025/06/05/t...
robinacrawford.com
The Sound of Many Waters 5
Macbeth’s oak, Birnam MacBeth was king of Scotland from 1040-1057. This ancient tree on the banks of the Tay at Birnam is associated with him. If not planted when the real MacBeth was king, i…
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Beatrix Potter based ‘Mrs Tiggywinkle’ on Kitty MacDonald, a washerwoman from Inver on the Tay. Read more here: robinacrawford.com/2025/05/30/t...
robinacrawford.com
The Sound of Many Waters 3
Frederick Warne & Co., Penguin Books. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Beatrix Potter based ‘Mrs Tiggywinkle’ on Kitty MacDonald, a washerwoman from Inver on the Tay. One of the many sounds along the river…
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
Millais came to the Tay not only to paint but also to fish… read more here: robinacrawford.com/2025/05/28/s...
robinacrawford.com
Sound of Many Waters 2
Millais was drawn to the river Tay not only to paint but, like so many others, came to fish. Here the artist becomes model, the epitome of the Victorian sporting gentleman. The artist is posed on a…
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
The title of my new book comes from this riverscape by Sir John Everett Millais. It was painted near Dunkeld, Perthshire in 1876. Read more here: robinacrawford.com/2025/05/26/t...
‘The Sound of Many Waters’ 1876 by John Everett Millais (1820-1896) in the collection of the National Trust for Scotland, Fyvie Castle
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 25/05/2025
Beautiful cover design by rosecooper.com
rosecooper.com
Rose Cooper Design
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 24/05/2025
Hi.
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Robin A Crawford @robincraw.bsky.social · 24/05/2025
Cover of my new book The Sound of Many Waters, A Journey Along the River Tay publishing 5 July
cover of my new book The Sound of Many Waters, A Journey Along the River Tay publishing 5 July
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