Edinburgh Festival Fringe Moffat found early success after university, becoming Director of the
Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1976. Moffat's five-year tenure saw the festival grow into the largest arts festival in the world.
STV Moffat left the Fringe in 1981 and joined
STV, where he rose to become programme director, Chief Executive of Network Production and finally Chairman of STV. In 1989 he was appointed to the NSG, the group that controls UK wide scheduling for ITV. He left STV in 1999 to focus on writing.
Writing During the 1970s and early 1980s Moffat wrote a number of papers focusing on education policy. His approach, recommending a renewed focus on primary education as the key to widening participation at secondary and higher levels, has since formed parts of the education manifestos of all three major parties in Britain. Moffat's writing since 1999 has been focused mainly in the field of social history. Beginning with
The Edinburgh Fringe (1978), he has written over forty books, including the bestselling
Tyneside,
The Reivers and
The Wall (all of which have since been remade as television series): •
The Edinburgh Fringe (1978) •
Kelsae: History of Kelso from Earliest Times (1985) •
Remembering Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1989) •
Arthur and the Lost Kingdoms (1999) •
The Sea Kingdoms: The History of Celtic Britain and Ireland (2001) •
The Borders: A History of the Borders from Earliest Times (2002) •
Homing: A Memoir (2003) •
Before Scotland: The Story of Scotland Before History (2005) •
Tyneside: A History of Newcastle and Gateshead from Earliest Times (2005), co-authored with George Rosie •
East Lothian (2006) •
The Reivers: The Story of the Border Reivers (2007) • ''The Wall: Rome's Greatest Frontier'' (2008) •
Tuscany: A History (2009) •
The Faded Map: The Lost Kingdoms of Scotland (2010) •
The Highland Clans (2010) •
The Scots: A Genetic Journey (2011) • ''Britain's Last Frontier: A Journey Along the Highland Line'' (2012) •
The British: A Genetic Journey (2013) •
The Great Tapestry of Scotland: The Making of a Masterpiece (2013) •
Bannockburn: The Battle for a Nation (2014) •
Hawick: A History from Earliest Times (2014) •
Scotland: A History from Earliest Times (2016) • ''The Hidden Ways: Scotland's Forgotten Roads'' (2017) •
To the Island of Tides: A Journey to Lindisfarne (2019) •
In Search of Angels: Travels to the Edge of the World (2020) •
The Secret History of Here: A Year in the Valley (2021) •
The Night Before Morning (2021) •
Islands of the Evening: Journeys to the Edge of the World (2022) •
War Paths: Walking in the Shadows of the Clans (2023) • ''Scotland's Forgotten Past: A History of the Mislaid, Misplaced and Misunderstood'' (2023) •
Between Britain: Walking the History of England and Scotland (2024) •
The Highlands and Islands of Scotland: A New History (2024) •
Edinburgh: A New History (2024)
Career after STV Since leaving STV in 1999, Moffat has served as Director of the Borders Book Festival and
Lennoxlove Book Festival, both of which he also founded. He has also maintained his interest in education, serving as Director of "Book Nation", a Scottish national literacy initiative, working alongside
Sir Robert Winston and
Margaret Drabble to improve literacy in Scotland. On 28 October 2011, Moffat was elected Rector of the
University of St Andrews. He was appointed for a three-year term, his period of office spanning the university's 600th anniversary celebrations which ran from 2011 to 2013.
BritainsDNA controversy Moffat was the chief executive of the company
BritainsDNA, which offered genetic analyses of the
mitochondrial DNA and
Y chromosomal DNA of customers who were interested in their ancestry. Moffat's management and promotion of the company generated some controversy and criticism from some of the scientific community due to certain scientifically unfounded claims. On the BBC
Today Programme, Moffat made some incorrect statements, including that 97% of men surnamed Cohen share a common genetic marker. Geneticists at
University College London including
David Balding and
Mark G. Thomas criticised these claims Balding and Thomas wrote a series of emails to the chief scientist at BritainsDNA, encouraging him to retract these inaccuracies. This was met by a legal threat from Moffat at their use of the term "fraudulent". The content of these messages has been since published. Moffat's claims about the Cohen genetic marker were ultimately retracted by the chief scientist of BritainsDNA, and the BBC upheld a complaint about the programme. The other Moffat companies providing
genetic testing included ScotlandsDNA (the first), IrelandsDNA, CymruDNAWales and YorkshiresDNA. BritainsDNA ceased trading in 2017. ==Personal life==