Alexander McCall Smith: from Botswana to Corduroy Mansions, PimlicoStory from The Telegraph today, Friday 12 September, 2008
Alexander McCall Smith begins an exclusive collaboration with Telegraph.co.uk on Monday, writing a new novel in daily episodes. Max Davidson reports
"Max? I’m so sorry." As he strides down the drive to meet me, Alexander McCall Smith is looking sheepish.
In his hand, incongruously, there is a large spade. It looks like a stage prop intended for a different character. For a split second, the bestselling novelist and distinguished former law professor resembles a jobbing gravedigger.
"My cat has just been sick on the lawn," he says apologetically. "Augustus," he explains, pointing out a feline that is slumped on the doormat. "He hasn’t been well for some time, poor chap. Won’t you come in?"
In his hand, incongruously, there is a large spade. It looks like a stage prop intended for a different character. For a split second, the bestselling novelist and distinguished former law professor resembles a jobbing gravedigger.
"My cat has just been sick on the lawn," he says apologetically. "Augustus," he explains, pointing out a feline that is slumped on the doormat. "He hasn’t been well for some time, poor chap. Won’t you come in?"
It is an eccentric introduction, but then McCall Smith, Sandy to his friends, is eccentric. He is not obviously flamboyant, though. Compared with his neighbour, crime writer Ian Rankin, who has a life-size purple cow in his front window, he could be a senior civil servant or High Court judge.
Horn-rimmed glasses shade shrewd, experienced eyes. A handkerchief peeps a discreet inch and a half above the breast pocket of his jacket. His large Victorian house, in the prosperous Edinburgh suburb of Merchiston, is furnished in the best possible taste.
But, praise be, the appearance of middle-class respectability is deceptive. No civil servant could have penned the novels for which McCall Smith is best known, the gloriously offbeat Precious Ramotswe series, featuring a stockily built lady detective in Botswana. And no High Court judge would deign to play the bassoon for the Really Terrible Orchestra.
Co-founded by McCall Smith, the group of persevering amateurs has won a cult following with its harmonically challenged playing. As he enters his seventh decade, the novelist retains the air of an impish school-boy, the sort of lad whose giggles infect the whole classroom.
The full story here.
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