ABSTRACT
Robin Murray was born in Glasgow in January 1944 and his early years were spent in Bearsden, a pleasant residential area on the northern outskirts of the city. His father James Alistair Campbell Murray was a school teacher in a Maryhill Secondary School and his mother Helen MacGregor was also a school teacher. While Robin was still a young boy his father contracted tuberculosis in a severe form and required surgical treatment, there being no effective antibiotics at that time. Murray senior was advised to move to the country so the family moved to a village in Berwickshire in 1951 where he became headmaster of Paxton Primary School. The staff comprised essentially one other teacher, for a while his wife Helen, and the family lived in the school house next door. The couple also taught Sunday school. Robin later remarked that one consequence of having parents for teachers was that you received double punishment for any misdemeanour; first at school and again when you got home.
