Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith
Born 24 August 1948
Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia
Nationality British
Citizenship United Kingdom
Genre Fiction, Crime fiction, Children's books, Academic non-fiction
Alexander McCall Smith's voice
Recorded January 2010 from the BBC Radio 4 programme Bookclub
Website
www.alexandermccallsmith.co.uk

R. Alexander "Sandy" McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE, (born 24 August 1948) is a Rhodesian-born British writer and Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. In the late twentieth century, McCall Smith became a respected expert on medical law and bioethics and served on British and international committees concerned with these issues. He has since become internationally known as a writer of fiction. He is most widely known as the creator of the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.[1] "McCall" is not a middle name: his surname is "McCall Smith".[2][3][4]

Biography

Alexander McCall Smith signing books in Helsinki April 2007

Alexander McCall Smith was born in Bulawayo, in the then British colony of Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe), where his father worked as a public prosecutor.[5] He was educated at the Christian Brothers College before moving to Scotland to study law at the University of Edinburgh, where he earned his PhD in law.[6] He soon taught at Queen's University Belfast, and while teaching there he entered a literary competition: one a children's book and the other a novel for adults. He won in the children's category, and published thirty books in the 1980s and 1990s.[5]

He returned to southern Africa in 1981 to help co-found and teach law at the University of Botswana. While there, he cowrote what remains the only book on the country's legal system, The Criminal Law of Botswana (1992).[7] He returned in 1984 to Edinburgh, Scotland, where he lives today with his wife, Elizabeth, a physician, and their two daughters Lucy and Emily (he lives close to the authors JK Rowling, Ian Rankin and Kate Atkinson.[8]). He was Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh at one time and is now Emeritus Professor at its School of Law. He retains a further involvement with the University in relation to the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

He is the former chairman of the British Medical Journal Ethics Committee (until 2002), the former vice-chairman of the Human Genetics Commission of the United Kingdom, and a former member of the International Bioethics Committee of UNESCO. After achieving success as a writer, he gave up these commitments. He was appointed a CBE in the December 2006 New Year's Honours List for services to literature.[9] In June 2007, he was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws at a ceremony celebrating the tercentenary of the University of Edinburgh School of Law.

He is an amateur bassoonist, and co-founder of The Really Terrible Orchestra. He has helped to found Botswana's first centre for opera training, the Number 1 Ladies' Opera House,[10] for whom he wrote the libretto of their first production, a version of Macbeth set among a troop of baboons in the Okavango Delta.[11][12] He is also the author of a testimonial in The Future of the NHS (2006).[13] His use of the serial format, in his Edinburgh and Pimlico novels, has revived the nineteenth-century format used by authors including Charles Dickens and Armistead Maupin.

In 2009, he donated the short story Still Life to Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales' project—four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. McCall Smith's story was published in the 'Air' collection.[14] Former First Lady of the United States Laura Bush is a big fan of Smith's, as is Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.[15]

Bibliography

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series

44 Scotland Street Series

  • 2005 44 Scotland Street
  • 2005 Espresso Tales
  • 2006 Love Over Scotland
  • 2007 The World According to Bertie
  • 2008 The Unbearable Lightness of Scones
  • 2010 The Importance of Being Seven
  • 2011 Bertie Plays The Blues
  • 2012 Sunshine on Scotland Street
  • 2013 Bertie's Guide to Life and Mothers

The Sunday Philosophy Club Series

also known as Isabel Dalhousie Mysteries

Corduroy Mansions

Professor Dr von Igelfeld Entertainments

  • 1997[16] Portuguese Irregular Verbs
  • 2003 The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs
  • 2003 At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances
    • 2004 The 2½ Pillars of Wisdom – An omnibus edition of the first three von Igelfeld titles
  • 2011 Unusual Uses for Olive Oil

Other novels

  • 2008 La's Orchestra Saves the World
  • 2012 Trains and Lovers
  • 2014 The Forever Girl
  • 2014 Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party
  • 2015 Emma: A Modern Retelling

Short stories

  • 2011 "The Strange Story of Bobby Box" (published in the young adult anthology What You Wish For)

Anthologies

  • 1991 Children of Wax: African Folk Tales
  • 1995 Heavenly Date and Other Flirtations
  • 2004 The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa

Children's novels

  • 1980 The White Hippo
  • 1984 The Perfect Hamburger
  • 1988 Alix and the Tigers
  • 1990 The Tin Dog
  • 1991 Calculator Annie
  • 1991 The Popcorn Pirates
  • 1992 The Doughnut Ring
  • 1994 Paddy and the Ratcatcher
  • 1995 The Muscle Machine
  • 1996 The Bubblegum Tree
  • 1997 The Five Lost Aunts of Harriet Bean
  • 2000 Teacher Trouble
  • 2006 Dream Angus

Akimbo

  • 1992 Akimbo and the Lions
  • 1993 Akimbo and the Crocodile Man
  • 2005 Akimbo and the Elephants
  • 2006 Akimbo and the Snakes
  • 2008 Akimbo and the Baboons

Harriet Bean

  • 1993 The Cowgirl Aunt of Harriet Bean
  • 1990 The Five Lost Aunts of Harriet Bean
  • 1991 Harriet Bean and the League of Cheats

Max & Maddy

  • 1997 Max & Maddy and the Bursting Balloons Mystery
  • 1999 Max & Maddy and the Chocolate Money Mystery

Young Precious Ramotswe

  • 2010 Precious and the Puggies[17] (republished in 2011 as Precious and the Monkeys)
  • 2012 Precious and the Mystery of Meerkat Hill
  • 2012 The Great Cake Mystery
  • 2013 Precious and the Missing Lion

Academic texts

  • 1978 Power and Manoeuvrability (with Tony Carty)
  • 1983 Law and Medical Ethics (with J. Kenyon Mason) (this text has gone through several editions: an eighth, by Mason and Graeme Laurie, was published in 2010; McCall Smith contributed to the first six editions)
  • 1987 Butterworths Medico-Legal Encyclopaedia (with J. Kenyon Mason)
  • 1990 Family Rights: Family Law and Medical Advances (with Elaine Sutherland)
  • 1991 All About Drink and Drug Abuse (educational text)
  • 1992 The Criminal Law of Botswana (with Kwame Frimpong)
  • 1993 The Duty to Rescue (with Michael Menlowe, 1993)
  • 1992 Scots Criminal Law (with David H Sheldon, second edition published 1997)
  • 1997 Forensic Aspects of Sleep (with Colin Shapiro)
  • 2000 Justice and the Prosecution of Old Crimes (with Daniel W. Shuman)
  • 2001 Errors, Medicine and the Law (with Alan Merry)
  • 2003 A Draft Criminal Code for Scotland (with Eric Clive, Pamela Ferguson and Christopher Gane)
  • 2004 Creating Humans: Ethical Questions where Reproduction and Science Collide (collected lectures, audio recordings)

See also

References

  1. ↑ Philby, Charlotte (19 June 2010). "Alexander McCall Smith: The No1 novelist's guide to Edinburgh". The Independent. Retrieved 26 August 2012.
  2. ↑ McCall Smith, Alexander. "A. McCall Smith (McCallSmith) on Twitter". Twitter.com. Twitter.com. Retrieved 15 October 2013.
  3. ↑ Grice, Elizabeth (13 March 2009). "Alexander McCall Smith talks about 'Corduroy Mansions' – interview". The Telegraph. The Telegraph. Retrieved 15 October 2013. To say McCall Smith is a literary phenomenon doesn't quite describe what has happened. [Quoted on McCall Smith's own home page
  4. ↑ McCall Smith praises inspiration of islands. Headline and also in text: "McCall Smith, 65, says islands take their residents back to childhood." Article dated 14 October 2013. Retrieved 15 October 2013.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Hunter, Jeffrey W. (2009). Contemporary Literary Criticism. Detroit, Michigan: Gale. ISBN 978-1-4144-1944-2.
  6. ↑ Nicoll, Ruaridh (2 May 2004). "Handy Sandy". The Observer. Retrieved 12 May 2008.
  7. ↑ Wands, D C and P G (16 May 2011). "Alexander McCall Smith". Fantastic Fiction. Retrieved 25 May 2011.
  8. ↑ Ian Rankin No. 1 Magazine, Retrieved 24 February 2014
  9. ↑ "New Year Honours—United Kingdom". The London Gazette. 29 December 2006. Retrieved 3 January 2009.
  10. ↑ Times article
  11. ↑ AFP news report on the ‘Okavango Macbeth’ on YouTube
  12. ↑ The Okavango Macbeth, More Information
  13. ↑ (ISBN 1-85811-369-5) edited by Dr Michelle Tempest
  14. ↑ Oxfam: Ox-Tales
  15. ↑ Kirkus Reviews. New York City: The Nielsen Company. 2005. ISSN 0042-6598.
  16. ↑ Maclean Dubois; 1st Edition (1997) Retrieved 5 December 2012.
  17. ↑ Scots language translation by James Robertson

External links

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