Robin Dalton

Robin Dalton AM (born 1920) is an Australian literary agent, film producer and memoirist who has lived in London for most of her adult life. She has also been a journalist, television performer and intelligence agent.

Career

Robin Ann Eakin was born in 1920 in Sydney, an only child, and grew up in Kings Cross, New South Wales. Her father was a doctor whose clientele included elements of the Sydney underworld as well as more respectable members of society.[1][2] She was frequently in the social pages of Sydney newspapers in her late teens.[3] A 1940 marriage to a barrister named John Spencer[2] did not last more than a few months, as he divorced her on the grounds of adultery.[4]

In 1946 she flew to London. While in Australia she had met David Mountbatten, 3rd Marquess of Milford Haven, Prince Philip's cousin and best man at his wedding to Princess Elizabeth, and in London their affair continued,[3] but they were prevented from marrying by her status as a divorcee.[4] She entered high society and met numerous international celebrities, which led to her doing espionage work for the Thai Government.[1][3][2]

She then met an Irish doctor named Emmett Dalton, whom she married in 1953. They had two children, Lisa and Seamus,[4][2] but he died suddenly at age 33, during heart surgery. In 1963 she started a life with Bill Fairchild, who became her third husband in 1992,[4] and died in 2000.[1]

Robin Dalton became a literary agent, acting for writers such as Joan Collins, Margaret Drabble, Arthur Miller, Iris Murdoch, Edna O'Brien, Sonia Orwell, John Osborne, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Bernice Rubens, David Storey, Ben Travers, Arnold Wesker and Tennessee Williams; and film makers such as Laurence Olivier,[2] Louis Malle and Peter Weir.[1][3][5]

She has been producer for films such as Emma's War (1987), Madame Sousatzka (1988), Country Life (1994) and Oscar and Lucinda (1997).[1][3]

She was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2013, "for significant service to the film industry as a producer, literary agent and author, and as a mentor to emerging actors and writers".[1][6]

She continues to live in London and Biarritz.

Bibliography

Memoirs
  • Aunts Up the Cross (1965)
  • One Leg Over (2017)

Fiction
  • My Relations (written at age 8, published in 2015, aged 94)
gollark: For now it will just look bad in the navbar.
gollark: I will wait for flexboxification.
gollark: I think search is useful enough that all pages are to contain it.
gollark: Oh bee oh apion.
gollark: Full text search.

References
  1. Text Publishing. Retrieved 7 December 2018
  2. Former spy Robin Dalton: "I feel sorry for young women today. There's very little romance", Elizabeth Grice, The Telegraph, 14 May 2016. Retrieved 7 December 2018
  3. Helen Trinca, "Author, literary agent, filmmaker Robin Dalton has lived life to full", Weekend Australian, 20-21 May 2017. Retrieved 7 December 2018
  4. Jane Wheatley, "How Sydney socialite and film producer Robin Dalton stole the headlines from WWII", Sydney Morning Herald, 3 March 2017. Retrieved 7 December 2018
  5. Australian Women's Weekly, 1 March 2017. Retrieved 7 December 2018
  6. It's an Honour. Retrieved 7 December 2018
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