Each of his three novels has been influenced to a degree by where he was living when he wrote them. His early short stories and first novel used contemporary and historical life in Edinburgh as a key theme, drawing on the fact he lived there intermittently during his PhD and during the later 1990s before moving to Fife, and subsequently Angus. Robertson had already been heavily influenced by MacDiarmid and MacDiarmid's Scots language poetry prior to this appointment. From 1993 to 1995 he was the first writer in residence at Hugh MacDiarmid's house outside Biggar, Lanarkshire. Robertson became a full-time author in the early 1990s. He was a publisher's sales rep and later worked for Waterstone's Booksellers, first as a bookseller in Edinburgh and later as assistant manager of the Glasgow branch. Robertson worked in a variety of jobs after leaving university, mainly in the book trade. He also spent an exchange year at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Educated at Glenalmond College and Edinburgh University, Robertson attained a PhD in history at Edinburgh on the novels of Walter Scott.
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