The Prime of Bertie Pollock

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The Prime of Bertie Pollock

ISBN: 9781846977442

Publisher: Polygon

Publication Date: 6 August 2026

The Prime of Bertie Pollock is the 19th novel in the 44 Scotland Street series.

To find out where we are going, we sometimes need to find out where we came from.

Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori Montagna, who is suffering from an acute identity crisis, wants to know more about her own past, and after doing a DNA test, she discovers that she has a relative she didn’t know about. But her newfound family causes a bit of a rift between her and her flatmate, Antonia Collie. Can they work out their differences?

Bertie’s dream of moving to the promised land – the Dear Green Place – comes crashing down as he learns that he is to move to the far northeast – Peterhead, near Aberdeen, leaving poor Ranald Braveheart Macpherson a little heartbroken and lost. Will the boys ever be reunited in the Georgian splendour of New Town Edinburgh?

And for Bruce, it’s a case of history repeating itself. After getting all the attention he craves – landing a starring role in a new television series – the universe has one way of putting him in his place. Even in modern Scotland, lurking Calvinist tendencies might still strike.

This is the longest running serial novel in the world and runs in The Scotsman newspaper, daily for three months of every year – but you can just as easily jump right in and enjoy any volume. You will laugh from the first page to the last.

Reviews

‘Bertie Pollock – the seven year old hero – has entranced readers around the world’

The Scotsman

‘In its wonderfully entertaining pages you will find love, tolerance and joy, a little poetry and some good home truths’

Sally McDonald, Sunday Post

‘The ever-so-deft McCall Smith has a light hand on the tiller in this amusing intergenerational tale’

Scottish Field

‘Positivity and finding comfort in the everyday are arguably the defining features of McCall Smith’s extensive literary back catalogue of more than 100 novels’

The 'i'

‘A toast to the importance of the simple joys of life at a time of global despair’

Sunday Post on the 44 Scotland Street series in general

Excerpt

Big Lou, owner of the Dundas Street coffee bar now known by its simplified name, Big Lou's, had always believed in breakfast. She knew that there were those who boasted of indifference to that particular meal, claiming to be satisfied with a slice of toast – and sometimes only a half-slice – washed down with black coffee. Could such people, she asked herself, really be happy? She thought not. Even it it were the case that they were not actually hungry, they were still denying themselves the sheer please that came from eating the sort of foods enjoyed by those who had regular breakfasts. They were, she decided, deprived – unhappy ascetics who worshipped some unsatisfying and elusive god of self-denial.

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