Alexander McCall Smith

Born: 1948, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)
First Book: The White Hippo (Hamish Hamilton, 1980)
Awards: The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency received two 1998 Booker Prize for Fiction Judges’ Special Recommendations and was voted as one of The Times Literary Supplement’s International Books of the Year and the Millennium. The Full Cupboard of Life was winner of the 2003 Saga Wit Award. In 2004 McCall Smith was named 'Author of the Year’ by both the Booksellers Association and British Book Awards, and in 2007 he was awarded the CBE for services to literature.

Most widely celebrated as the creator of the Botswanan sleuth, Precious Ramotswe of The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, Alexander McCall Smith is the bestselling author of over sixty books ranging from reference works such as The Forensic Aspects of Sleep to his immensely popular children’s titles, short-story collections and novels.

Born in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1948, McCall Smith was educated in Bulawayo before moving to Scotland to study law at the University of Edinburgh. He returned to Africa to set up and teach at the law faculty at the University of Botswana before returning to Edinburgh.

He was, until 2005, a professor of medical law at the University of Edinburgh, but gave up the position to concentrate on his writing. He is now Emeritus Professor. He has also held roles in a number of national and international organisations concerned with bioethics and genetics. He was vice-chairman of the Human Genetics Commission of the United Kingdom, a member of the International Bioethics Commission of UNESCO, and, until 2002, chairman of the British Medical Journal Ethics Committee.

The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series now numbers a total of ten books (The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Tears of the Giraffe, Morality for Beautiful Girls, The Kalahari Typing School for Men, The Full Cupboard of Life, In the Company of Cheerful Ladies, Blue Shoes and Happiness, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, The Miracle at Speedy Motors and The Double Comfort Safari Club). The series has sold over 20 million copies in the English language worldwide, has been translated into forty-five languages and has been turned into a hugely successful television series on both sides of the Atlantic.

Alexander has also written the Introduction to Mma Ramotswe’s Cookbook, a sumptuous journey through the food of Botswana in the company of Precious Ramotswe, written by Stuart Brown and available from Polygon.

His 44 Scotland Street series, which appears in daily episodes in the Scotsman newspaper and is published in full by Polygon, has also been enjoying considerable success. The light-hearted series concerns itself with the comings and goings of an eclectic group of Edinburgh residents and has received wide critical acclaim. There are five books to date: 44 Scotland Street, Espresso Tales, and Love Over Scotland, The World According to Bertie, The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, with a sixth - The Importance of Being Seven - due to be published in July 2010 by Polygon.

The Sunday Philosophy Club series features the half-American, half-Scottish Isabel Dalhousie, editor of The Review of Applied Ethics and amateur Edinburgh sleuth. Much like Precious Ramotswe, she often entangles herself in problems that are none of her business – including murder, love and sedition – and which put to good use her philosophical brilliance. The series is made up of The Sunday Philosophy Club; Friends, Lovers, Chocolate; The Right Attitude to Rain; The Careful Use of Compliments and The Comfort of Saturdays.

In The von Igelfeld series, McCall Smith introduces the unnaturally tall Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld of the Institute of Romance Philology, who is engaged in a comical, never-ending mission to win the respect that he is convinced he is due from others. The trilogy of books –Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs and The Villa of Reduced Circumstances – is now published in one volume, The 2½ Pillars of Wisdom.

Alexander McCall Smith lives in Edinburgh with his wife Elizabeth. They have two daughters, Lucy and Emily. He and Elizabeth are members of his co-founded Really Terrible Orchestra, in which he plays the bassoon.



Find out more about the many wonderful worlds of Alexander McCall Smith at www.alexandermccallsmithbooks.co.uk

Picture by Graham Clark