Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith is the prolific author of the light-hearted crime fiction series No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, loved for Precious Ramotswe’s wisdom and cheer as much as its investigative storylines, and the incredibly popular 44 Scotland Street – warm-hearted and acutely observed novels centring on the inhabitants of a quiet urban neighbourhood. ...

McCall Smith – Sandy to his friends – was born 1948 in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and came to Scotland at 17 to study at Edinburgh University. He had already started publishing children’s books in the 1980s, when he returned to Africa to teach law at the University of Botswana; this experience would bear fruit in his No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books, the first of which appeared in 1998. Featuring the wise, wryly humorous Precious Ramotswe and her friend Grace Makutsi, the series has reached 23 novels so far, selling more than 20 million copies, and has been adapted for TV.

In 2004 McCall Smith launched 44 Scotland Street as a serial in The Scotsman. Set in Edinburgh’s New Town, this story about the hunt for a missing painting features the anthropologist Domenica Macdonald; young Bertie Pollock, whose desire to be an ordinary boy is at odds with the ambitions of his pretentious mother Irene; and a cameo appearance by McCall Smith’s real-life neighbour, the crime novelist Ian Rankin. Published in book form the following year, it became the first of a series that extended to 17 books in 2023, including The Revolving Door of Life (2015), A Time of Love and Tartan (2017) and A Promise of Ankles (2020).

Alongside Scotland Street, McCall Smith was working on the Sunday Philosophy Club series featuring Isabel Dalhousie, a philosopher who edits an impoverished academic journal while investigating crimes that come her way. Isabel’s adventures have continued through a further 13 novels to date, including The Forgotten Affairs of Youth (2011) and The Sweet Remnants of Summer (2022).

Also notable for his 2019 tongue-in-cheek response to the popularity of Scandi Noir fiction, the ‘Scandi Blanc’ Department of Sensitive Crimes set in Malmö, Sweden, Alexander McCall Smith received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Saltire Society in September 2023.