About

JAMES CRAWFORD

James Crawford is a writer and broadcaster. Born in Shetland in 1978, he studied History and Philosophy of Law at the University of Edinburgh, winning the Lord President Cooper Memorial Prize. He has been a literary agent and a publisher, and for over a decade he worked for and researched Scotland's National Collection of architecture and archaeology.

James's first major work of non-fiction, Fallen Glory: The Lives and Deaths of the World’s Greatest Lost Buildings was published to critical acclaim in November 2015. Selected as a ‘Book of the Year’ by the New Statesman, the Independent and the Scotsman, it also led to media interviews on the Today Programme, Start the Week and Newsnight, among others. In 2016 Fallen Glory was shortlisted for ‘Non-Fiction Book of the Year’ at Scotland’s National Book Awards. In March 2017 it was published in America by Picador, going on to feature in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and the National Post. The Wall Street Journal described it as ‘a book of and for the world’.

His most recent book, The Edge of the Plain: How Borders Make and Break Our World, was published in August 2022 in the UK, and January 2023 in the US, and has now been translated into Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese and Mandarin. In July 2023 he was selected as a finalist in the Falling Walls Breakthrough of the Year for the Humanities for ‘reimagining the concept of borders’. In November 2023 The Edge of the Plain was shortlisted for ‘Non-Fiction Book of the Year’ at Scotland’s National Book Awards.

In 2018 James wrote and presented Scotland from the Sky on BBC1 Scotland, his first television documentary series. A second three-part series followed in Spring 2019, and a third in Winter 2021. Over the past decade he researched Scotland’s National Collection of Aerial Photography – an archive of millions of images held by Historic Environment Scotland – and has written a number of photographic books on its history, origins and application, including Above Scotland (2009), Scotland's Landscapes (2012), and Aerofilms: A History of Britain from Above (2014). 

He is also the co-author of Who Built Scotland: A History of the Nation in 25 Buildings, with Alexander McCall Smith, Alistair Moffat, James Robertson and Kathleen Jamie.

In 2016 he was elected as Chair of the Board of Publishing Scotland, the network body for the publishing industry in Scotland; and in 2019 he was appointed as the Archive and Record Association’s first Scottish ‘Ambassador’ for their ‘Explore Your Archives’ campaign.

Since 2019 he has also worked as Editor-at-Large for the publisher Birlinn/Polygon.

In Sepetember 2024 he was appointed as Chair of the Board of the Edinburgh International Book Festival

He lives in Edinburgh.