Robin Ann Dalton AM ( Eakin; 22 December 1920 – 8 July 2022) was an Australian literary agent, film producer and memoirist who lived in London for most of her adult life. She was also a journalist, television performer and intelligence agent.

Life and 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.Text Publishing
Retrieved 7 December 2018Former 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 She was frequently in the social pages of Sydney newspapers in her late teens.Helen Trinca, "Author, literary agent, filmmaker Robin Dalton has lived life to full", ''Weekend Australian'', 20-21 May 2017
Retrieved 7 December 2018 A 1940 marriage to a barrister named John Spencer did not last more than a few months, as he divorced her on the grounds of adultery. 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, but they were prevented from marrying by her status as a divorcee.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 She entered high society and met numerous international celebrities, which led to her doing espionage work for the Thai Government. She then met an Irish doctor named Emmet Dalton, whom she married in 1953. They had two children, Lisa and Seamus, but Emmet died suddenly at age 33 during heart surgery. In 1963 she started a life with Bill Fairchild, who became her third husband in 1992 and died in 2000. Robin Dalton became a literary agent, acting for writers such as Joan Collins,

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, Arthur Miller, Iris Murdoch, Edna O'Brien, Sonia Orwell,

John Osborne John James Osborne (12 December 1929 – 24 December 1994) was an English playwright, screenwriter and actor, known for his prose that criticized established social and political norms. The success of his 1956 play ''Look Back in Anger'' tra ...

, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Bernice Rubens, David Storey, Ben Travers, Arnold Wesker and Tennessee Williams; and film makers such as

Laurence Olivier Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier (; 22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an English actor and director who, along with his contemporaries Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, was one of a trio of male actors who dominated the Theatre of the U ...

, Louis Malle and Peter Weir. She produced such films as '' Emma's War'' (1987), '' Madame Sousatzka'' (1988), '' Country Life'' (1994) and '' Oscar and Lucinda'' (1997).

Honours

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".It's an Honour
Retrieved 7 December 2018

Bibliography

Memoirs

* ''Aunts Up the Cross'' (1965) * ''An Incidental Memoir'' (1998) * ''One Leg Over'' (2017)

Fiction

* ''My Relations'' (written at age 8, published in 2015, aged 94)

References