Robin Hardy

Robin Hardy, born Robin St. Clair Rimington Hardy on 2 October 1929 and dead on 1 July 2016, was an English author and film director best remembered for The Wicker Man (1973). Born in Wimbledon, London, he went to Bradfield College and studied art in Paris. He began directing for the National Film Board of Canada and for the Esso World Theater strand on the American PBS channel, and on returning to London co-founded the advertising agency Hardy Shaffer Ferguson Avery with the playwright and screenwriter Anthony Shaffer, with whom he then made The Wicker Man, a folk horror film starring Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee. He afterwards worked on commercials in the United States, wrote historical novels and helped create historical theme parks. His later projects include the novelization of The Wicker Man, the novel Cowboys for Christ and its film adaptation, retitled The Wicker Tree (2011), which completed a loose trilogy he hoped to end with The Wrath of the Gods.