Moira Armstrong

Biography

Born in Crieff in 1930 and raised in north-east Scotland, Moira Armstrong is a Scottish television director whose career has expanded over nearly fifty years. Her credits include episodes of Armchair Thriller (based on the novel Quiet as a Nun), The Onedin Line, Lark Rise to Candleford, Where the Heart Is, The Bill, Midsomer Murders, Something in Disguise, The Wednesday Play, and Adam Adamant Lives!, the biographical serial Freud (1984) as well as the television film The Countess Alice (1992). She also directed Sunset Song, the 1971 adaptation for television of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's novel, notable not only for being the first drama to be recorded in colour by BBC Scotland but also featuring its first nude scene. Armstrong (with Jonathan Powell) won the 1980 BAFTA Best Drama Series/Serial award for Testament of Youth (1979). In 2024 and 2025 many of her TV work was repeated as part of a retrospective of vintage drama on BBC4, with Armstrong invited to introduce several of the productions alongside fellow cast and crew.