Novels, novellas, inventions, non-fiction and exploration—Alexander writes all manner of books that are not part of his serial fiction.
From one of the world’s favourite authors comes a beautifully atmospheric novel set in the Hebrides and Nepal. The writing is irresistible – tender – as this master storyteller leads us through a literary world where happiness might, possibly, be found where it is least expected.
Mary is a logical soul; a much-loved teacher and crofter whose busy Hebridean life leaves little room for flights of fancy. But when a windfall comes her way, Miss Macdonald decides it’s time to sample some clear mountain air – on the other side of the world.
The Isle of Good Karma is a new novel from a much-loved author in celebration of travel, karma and broadening the mind, all while staying true to your principles.
‘Alexander McCall Smith – Literary legend’ – Big Issue
Reviews
The Private Side of Friendship – an exquisite stand-alone novel of unforgettable friendship, personal growth and societal change.
It is 1984, and the UK is experiencing a moment of great significance: the miners’ strike. In mining communities throughout the country, passions run high as the confrontation between the Government and the miners is notched up. In the affected communities, there is real hardship as the families of striking miners go without. In slow motion, an old way of life is brought to an end.
In Edinburgh, in a large flat overlooking the Meadows parkland, six students are facing the end of an academic year, preparing to go their separate ways in a changing world.
Over three years, they drift apart through the twists and turns of life, before meeting up for a reunion in 1987, for what may well be their last evening together. It becomes clear to all that sometimes you have to let go of the past. You take away its lessons, but you let the rest go.
The Private Side of Friendship is a modern classic – powerful, deeply moving.
‘This is a novel about six students, living in Edinburgh in 1984. Against the backdrop of the Miners’ Strike and its impact on society, we visit the friendships that develop between these young people and consider the delicate line between being a friend and being a lover. Being a flatmate is not always easy, but at times it is deeply satisfying.’
– Alexander McCall Smith
Reviews
This Great Tapestry of Scotland book is a truly gorgeous gift, showing every panel in the award-winning artwork in detail and in full colour. Every panel picture is accompanied by the names of the stitchers who worked on it and the story from history that it depicts. The text is by people’s historian and BAFTA film maker Alistair Moffat, illustrations from the artist Dr Andrew Crummy, and a foreward from our own Alexander McCall Smith.
Reviews
The Winds from Further West is a new, stand alone novel – an intimate and unexpected portrait of one man’s crumbling world. It is exactly the book we need right now so sit back and breathe in every, perfect word.
A call to arms for better society – BBC Radio4
Almost everything starts in a small way. Often it is a very small and apparently insignificant event that ends up moulding the whole shape of our lives.
And so it was for Dr Neil Anderson who had barely been in his new post at the University of Edinburgh for three months when he meets Chrissie. After no time at all, they move in together to a beautiful Georgian flat in the south side of the city and start their life together. Everything seems to be working out well for Neil. But after a throw-away comment lands him in a difficult situation, his principles are put to the test. He ultimately has no choice but to rethink his career and his life. He leaves his job, Chrissie and Edinburgh far behind for the seclusion and remote beauty of the Isle of Mull off the west coast of Scotland.
No sooner has he started to piece the bits of his shattered life together when a ship comes into Tobermory harbour whose cargo – two wolf cubs – changes the course of his life yet again. These cubs divide opinion on the island and introduce Neil to Jill, a vet on the island, and soon love once again blossoms.
Reviews
Alexander McCall Smith’s short stories sit comfortably with those of the greatest writers of all time. Pianos and Flowers is a superb collection and a powerful gift from a writer working at the top of his game.
A few years ago, Alexander McCall Smith met the editor of The Sunday Times and agreed to write a series of short stories which would run in the paper. The Sunday Times opened up their archive of photographs and Alexander selected anonymous, black and white pictures, imagined the story behind the scenes depicted, and created delightfully playful stories to enchant the reader. These stories appeared in the paper but since then, Alexander has reshaped them, added new stories and they have now grown into a powerful, hugely entertaining collection of tales of love and romance.
When I was asked by the The Sunday Times to write a number of short stories for the newspaper, I suggested that I should select photographs from their extensive photographic archive, and create stories based on what I imagined the pictures depicted. Six of the stories were published in the paper – a few of them are included here, but the rest are new. We do not know, of course, who the people in these photographs were, nor what they were up to. They were almost certainly not doing what I say they are, but that is the joy of looking at photographs in this way: from the tiniest visual clue we can create a whole hinterland of experience – of love, of hope, of simply being human.
In Pianos and Flowers, Alexander McCall Smith invites us to glimpse a world long departed. These perfectly crafted stories, inspired by forgotten photographs from exotic and intriguing places, bring us the lives of the people in the frame – imagined and explored, layer by layer. We share the tale of three sisters in Penang, caught in the tide of war. In a Glasgow slum, we discover the contrasting destinies of a group of small boys. In the unlikely realm of Egyptian antiquities, we follow a young woman’s search for love. Through all these photographs and stories, there runs the same refrain: the possibilities of love, of friendship, of happiness.
And through all of these photographs, and all of these stories, there runs the same refrain: the possibilities of love, of friendship, of happiness lie before us.
Created by the author of The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, the stories in Pianos and Flowers are playful, emotional and ultimately uplifting.
Reviews
Who knows the truth of the private life of spies?
His name was Fergus Andrew Mactavish and he was a framer in a remote part of Argyll. He went to his grave, unexposed, in 2003. At that simple ceremony of farewell, conducted under a West Highland sky filled with sharp, April light, only two of those present were aware of any claim that Fergus might have to be listed in the company of some of the century’s best-known spies. And those two would never speak about it. Never.
From a highly reluctant German spy who is drawn to an East Anglian nunnery as his only means of escape, to the strange tale of one of the Cambridge spy ring’s adventures with a Russian dwarf, these are Alexander McCall Smith’s intriguing and typically inventive stories from the world of espionage. Five tales, part fiction and part non-ficiton, The Private Life of Spies is a splendid, handsome volume.
‘Conradin Muller was an unusual spy. He was recruited in Hamburg in June 1943, much against his will, and sent on his first, and only, mission in late September that year. He failed to send a single report back to Germany, and when the war came to an end in May 1945, he fell to his knees and wept with relief…’
Praise for earlier works of short fiction by Alexander McCall Smith
‘Windows on the world… deft and funny and smart’ — Financial Times
‘Mighty of heart and the most wonderful gift for someone who would appreciate a smile or hug. Short and sharp, yet bountiful and considerate – fabulous’ — Lovereading.com
‘These stories are full of insight and empathy … Works of depth and beauty that would not be shamed in the company of the world’s greatest short stories’ — Sydney Morning Herald
‘Exquisitely funny… I can’t think of any other writer who could come up with anything like this, because as well as being among the funniest he has ever written, these stories are also moving, respectful and kind’ — The Scotsman
‘The stories are filled with the weight of real life… this collection is sure to delight both Smith fans and newcomers alike’ — Publishers Weekly
‘It is remarkably clever how, in just a few pages, he [Alexander McCall Smith] can create a complete little world’ — The Cultural Voyager
‘Charismatic and charming, convincingly demonstrates that length is by no means essential for a captivating read’ — Scottish Field
‘My most treasured possession is my bookcase filled with every book you have written. I have read them all and they have greatly contributed to the peace and tranquillity in my life’ — Reader Letter
‘Devilishly delightful’ — Books from Scotland
‘Perfect for those without the time, patience of inclination to pick up a novel’ — Sunday Post
‘Very enjoyable stories crafted by an expert storyteller. Written with humour and sensitivity about that flawed and insignificant species, Humanity’ — GoodReads.com
Reviews
The Captain’s Cabin is published in support of the successful and transformational charity, Jamie’s Farm.
Through residential farm experience and a rigorous follow-up programme combining farming, family and therapy, Jamie’s Farm acts as a catalyst for change for young people at risk of social and academic exclusion. Those involved with the charity aim to better equip these young people to thrive during secondary school years and beyond – academically, socially and emotionally.
Alexander McCall Smith wrote this short novel, The Captain’s Cabin, based in-part on truth. But he was also inspired by images to be found in the real Captain’s Cabin and drew heavily on his quite remarkable imagination. The sale of the book will contribute to the construction of two cabins for short-term rental on each farm. In turn, the rental income will underwrite the shortfall between the money raised through charitable donations and the contribution made by participating schools. Schools throughout the UK have sent over 7000 children to stay on the farms so far.
The Captain’s Cabin tells the story of Captain Andrew McNair Douglas, who met his wife on the Arcadia in 1893 while she was travelling to India in search of a husband. The scene is depicted in one of the photographs on the wall in the real Captain’s Cabin – situated down a single track road from Lochaline in the west of Scotland, overlooking the Sound of Mull. Their son, Thomas, born in 1900, also became a sea captain. He was educated at a boarding school in Perth, where he was taught by a teacher who died in an avalanche — and whose skis and film projector are also pictured in the book and on the walls of the Captain’s Cabin. Everywhere you look in the cabin, you can find something which is also pictured in the novella.
The novella’s fifty-five pages contain poetry, plot twists and unexpected developments, such as visits by Hemingway to Tobermory and Oban.
Find out more about Jamie’s Farm here.
Not all of the story is made up. “The Captain’s Cabin does in fact exist, as do some of the characters,” McCall Smith writes in the book’s preface. “As for the Captain himself, and his father, I am not so sure, but if he did not exist, then perhaps he should have.”
Reviews
Excerpt
"A shilling life," wrote the poet W.H. Auden, "will give you all the facts..."
It will indeed. A short biography will tell you all you need to know about many people, about where they were born, where they lived, and how they earned their living. For most of us, a few sentences will do all that work, will set out with sufficient clarity the landscape of our life, showing its saliences, its small moments of triumph, its feel, its texture. Others may require slightly more, but, event then, a biography does not have to run to hundreds of pages to do justice to its subject.
So what will a shilling life tell us about the Captain?...
In The Exquisite Art of Getting Even, the act of revenge sometimes causes people to act blindly through anger, rather than reason.
The characters in this delightful book are pushed to the point of no return and seek retribution. But retribution is not always found on the road to redemption.
On the island of Mull, it takes an incomer to make the locals realise that they need to take matters into their own hands to maintain the community’s reputation. In ‘The Principles of Soap’ the value of friendship overcomes adversity and opportunistic nepotism. In suburban Edinburgh opposing neighbours find out the hard way that the best way to deal with a canine disturbance is not to bury one’s head in the sand. And in the final tale we meet an author on the brink of public ruin who sees the error of his ways after an act of kindness saves the day.
In each of the tales in The Exquisite Art of Getting Even, revenge is a dish best served cold. Tantalising and highly amusing, these stories show off a darker side, but carry with them the author’s trademark warmth and humour.
A desire for revenge is something that every one of us must have felt at one time or another, unless, of course, we are saints – which most of us are not.
Somebody wrongs us and, as we nurse our pain and sense of injustice, we imagine the wrongdoer having exactly the same thing done to him or her – or even worse. This is revenge: the bitter bit, and it is very satisfactory, a great theme for Elizabethan drama.
Reviews
Stories do not have to be long. In the space of a couple of sentences – or even a page or two – we can see the human heart exposed in a way that is more powerful than in a novel. Little ‘windows on the world’.
In Tiny Tales Alexander McCall Smith explores romance, ambition, kindness and happiness in thirty short stories that range in length from the short to the tiny. The settings are as diverse as the characters – Scotland, England, Australia, the United States – combining to create a rich and always surprising selection. An Australian pope? A persuasive cosmetic surgeon? The world’s laziest cat? A group of students living together and getting romantically entangled? All human and animal life is here – in miniature – some as straightforward text stories and others as graphic tales in collaboration with long-time friend and illustrator Iain McIntosh.
From one Tiny Tale, a tiny extract to tempt you to read more…
“You know, what are the odds if you’re a tattooist – what are the odds of the Pope coming in and asking for a tattoo? Incalculable?”
“I mean it,” said the Pope. “I would like you to do that.”
From Tiny Tales (paperback):
A Tiny Graphic Tale by Iain McIntosh from Tiny Tales (paperback)
or visit his website.
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Bestselling novelist Alexander McCall Smith’s charming account of how the poet W.H. Auden has helped guide his life — and how he might guide yours, too. Now available in paperback.
In this book McCall Smith has written a charming personal account about what W.H. Auden has done for him.
Part self-portrait, part literary appreciation, the book tells how McCall Smith first came across the poet’s work in the 1070s while teaching law in Belfast. At the time, this was a violently divided city and Auden’s ‘September 1, 1939’, a poem about the outbreak of World War II, resonated strongly. McCall Smith goes on to reveal how his life has related to and been inspired by other Auden poems ever since.
An enchanting story about how art can help us live, this book will appeal to McCall Smith’s fans and anyone curious about Auden.
Read more in this article by Alexander McCall Smith, written when the book was first published in hardback.
Reviews
Now available in paperback- The Pavilion in the Clouds, a new stand-alone novel from the master storyteller.
It is 1938 and the final days of the British Empire. In a bungalow high up in the green hills above the plains of Ceylon, under a vast blue sky, live the Ferguson family: Bella, a precocious eight-year-old; her father Henry – owner of Pitlochry, a tea plantation – and her mother Virginia. The story centres around the Pavilion in the Clouds, set in the idyllic grounds carved out of the wilderness. But all is not as serene as it seems. Bella is suspicious of her governess, Miss White’s intentions. Her suspicion sparks off her mother’s imagination and after an unfortunate series of events, a confrontation is had with Miss White and a gunshot rings off around the hills.
Years later, Bella, now living back in Scotland at university in St Andrews, is faced, once again with her past. Will she at last find out what happened between her Father and Miss White? And will the guilt she has lived with all these years be reconciled by a long over-due apology?
Reviews
The world’s first UNESCO city of literature, Edinburgh is steeped in literary history. It is the birthplace of a beloved cast of fictional characters from Sherlock Holmes to Harry Potter. It is the home of the Writer’s Museum, where quotes from writers of the past pave the steps leading up to it. A city whose beauty is matched only by the intrigue of its past, and where Robert Louis Stevenson said, ‘there are no stars so lovely as Edinburgh’s street-lamps’. And to celebrate the city, its literature, and more importantly, its people, Polygon and the One City Trust have brought together writers – established and emerging – to write about the place they call home.
Based around landmarks or significant links to Edinburgh each story transports the reader to a different decade in the city’s recent past. Through these stories each author reflects on the changes, both generational and physical, in the city in which we live.
Introduction by Irvine Welsh
Written by Nadine Aisha Jassat, Anne Hamilton, Alexander McCall Smith, Ian Rankin, Sara Sheridan
It is 1938 and the final days of the British Empire. In a bungalow high up in the green hills above the plains of Ceylon, under a vast blue sky, live the Ferguson family: Bella, a precocious eight-year-old; her father Henry – owner of Pitlochry, a tea plantation – and her mother Virginia. The story centres around the Pavilion in the Clouds, set in the idyllic grounds of the plantation, carved out of the wilderness. But all is not as serene as it seems. Bella is suspicious of her governess, Miss White’s intentions. Her suspicion sparks off her mother’s imagination and after an unfortunate series of events, a confrontation is had with Miss White and a gunshot rings off around the hills.
Years later, Bella, now living back in Scotland at university in St Andrews, is faced, once again with her past. Will she at last find out what happened between her Father and Miss White? And will the guilt she has lived with all these years be reconciled by a long over-due apology?
A true classic of the imagination from the pen of Alexander McCall Smith. This is a novel that will transport readers from armchair to Ceylon in just the same ways in which The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency transports them to Botswana – you will feel the heat of the sun, the length of the days, the love of an author for a country. And you will feel the angst of a family far from home and watch as their lives start to unravel.
Reviews
Tiny Tales – a unique collaboration from bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith and illustrator Iain McIntosh. Perfect short stories that dance across your mind just as an amuse bouche dances on your tongue.
Stories do not have to be long. In the space of a couple of sentences – or even a page or two – we may see the human heart exposed in a way that is more powerful than occurs in many much longer narratives.
In Tiny Tales Alexander McCall Smith explores romance, ambition, kindness and happiness in thirty short stories that range in length from the short to the minuscule. The settings are as diverse as the characters – Scotland, England, Australia, the United States – combining to create a rich and surprising tableau. An Australian pope? A persuasive cosmetic surgeon? The world’s laziest cat? A group of students living together and getting romantically entangled? All human and animal life is here – in miniature.
These stories are inspired and accompanied by the thirty magnificent strip Tiny Tales created by McCall Smith and illustrated by the brilliant Iain McIntosh – each cartoon a little gem of observation.
Tiny Tales strips appeared every week in the Financial Times for a four month period.
Very short stories are not the exclusive preserve of writers. Illustrators are also adept at the form, and it was for this reason that I approached the well-known Scottish illustrator Iain McIntosh to see whether he would be interested in embarking on a series of extremely brief stories. The idea was that Iain would draw four panels in which a whole story would be illustrated with the minimum of text.
Listen to Alexander talking about Tiny Tales here.
Reviews
Welcome to the SECOND WORST restaurant in France.
Paul Stewart has returned to Scotland to continue his successful career. His agent and girlfriend, Gloria, has arranged for him to write The Philosophy of Food in Six Easy Chapters. This is a project he relishes but it will have to be delivered within six months. It is not going well, as Paul finds his domestic circumstances unsuited to concentrated hard work. Gloria has now moved in with him (not specifically invited) and has brought with her two extremely vocal and demanding Siamese cats. The cats give Paul no peace.
Beginning to worry that The Philosophy of Food will never be written Paul calls on the aid of his cousin, Chloe, who suggests a radical course of action. She has taken a six-month lease on a house in a French village not far from Poitiers and invites him to join her there. He will be able to get the book finished in peace. He needs no second bidding and it is not long before he escapes to France. Once there, however, Paul finds his fortunes tangled up with the fate of one eating establishment in the village: the infamous ‘Second Worst Restaurant in France‘…
Read more about Paul Stewart’s hilarious food related adventures in My Italian Bulldozer.
‘This is McCall Smith’s genius — he makes you love the people in his books. In crass times like these, the deep civility that powers his voice is a balm. That and he makes you laugh, and how many can claim that?’ – New York Times
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In search of a nation
‘What we build always reveals things that are deeply and innately human. Because all buildings are stories, one way or another’
Kathleen Jamie, Alexander McCall Smith, Alistair Moffat, James Robertson and James Crawford travel across Scotland to tell the story of the nation, from abandoned islands and lonely glens to the heart of our modern cities. Whether visiting Shetland’s Mousa Broch at midsummer, following in the footsteps of pilgrims to Iona Abbey, joining the tourist bustle at Edinburgh Castle, scaling the Forth Bridge or staying in an off-the-grid eco-bothy, the authors unravel the stories of the places, people and passions that have had an enduring impact on the landscape and character of Scotland.
Reviews
In this beguiling book Alexander McCall Smith casts his eye over five chanced-upon vintage photographs from the era of black-and-white photography and imagines the stories behind them. The images are ‘orphaned’—who were those people, what were their stories, why are they smiling, what made them sad? What emerges are surprising and poignant tales of love and friendship in a variety of settings—an estate in the Highlands of Scotland, a travelling circus in Canada, an Australian gold-mining town, a village in Ireland, and the Scottish capital, Edinburgh. Some will find joy and fulfilment—others would prefer happier endings. Each of them, though, will find love, and that is ultimately what matters.
Reviews
My Italian Bulldozer is a hilarious new stand-alone novel about one man’s misadventures in travel and romance in the Italian countryside.
When writer Paul Stewart heads to the idyllic Italian town of Montalcino to finish his already overdue cookbook, he expects it to be the perfect escape from stressful city life. But when he arrives, things quickly take a turn for the worse. His hired car is nowhere to be found, and with no record of a reservation at the car-rental counter and no other cars are available, it appears that Paul will be stuck at the airport that is, until an enterprising stranger offers him an unexpected alternative: an Italian bulldozer. With little choice in the matter, Paul accepts, and so begins a series of laugh-out-loud adventures as he trundles through the Tuscan countryside. A story of unexpected circumstances and making the best of what you have, My Italian Bulldozeris a warm and witty read guaranteed to put a smile on your face.
Reviews
There are some poems that haunt the heart. In this book, A Gathering, Alexander McCall Smith takes you on a personal journey through the landscape of Scottish poetry, choosing those poems that mean most to him. Some of these are well known, others are less familiar — private gems that he feels should be more widely shared. The poems range from early ballads through Burns to works of twentieth-century figures such as MacDiarmid and Morgan. There are lines here to make the heart soar — just as there are lines that may break it.
Poetry is often a private consolation. We find poems that mean something to us because they express a vision we recognise as true. Lines that give voice to some important truth about the world may remain with us for life, reminding us of the importance of love and sympathy, of joy and insight — of everything that makes us human. A Gathering is a collection of poems that celebrates all these things, as well as Scotland itself, the land and its people, its mountains, its islands, its moments of despair, of loss, of triumph and exhilaration.
The rose of all the world is not for me,
I want for my part
Only the little white rose of Scotland
That smells sharp and sweet – and breaks the heart.
—Hugh MacDiarmid
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Val was working as a land girl when the Americans arrived at the nearby airfield in 1944. Mike, a young American airman, came into her life soon after, and so too did Peter Woodhouse, a dog badly treated on a neighbouring farm and taken in by her aunt.
Little persuasion was needed for Mike to take Peter Woodhouse to the airbase and over time he became the mascot of the American squad, flying with them whenever their Mosquitoes took to the skies. When their plane is shot down over Holland both Mike and his canine companion are feared lost.
But unknown to their loved ones at home, Mike and Peter Woodhouse (the Good Pilot from the book’s title) survived the crash. Taken in by the Dutch resistance and with the help of Ubi, a German officer, the pair remain in hiding until the end of the war when they are reunited with Val. We then follow Val, Mike and Peter Woodhouse as they rebuild a life in England. And Ubi as he returns to Germany at the end of the war and tries to build a new life for himself.
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Discover the favourite recipes of our ‘traditionally built’ heroine and her friends, accompanied by lavish photography—delicious stews for sharing, fabulous fruit cakes for eating under shady trees, with redbush tea of course, and the spices, traditions and culture of Botswana that make every meal together special. Welcome Precious, her friends and the sunshine of Botswana into your kitchen. A feast for all the senses!
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Excerpt
A delightful charity collection of short stories exploring love, friendship, passion and betrayal.
Alexander McCall Smith joins Cecelia Ahern, Kate Mosse, Sophie Kinsella and more to create a book of wonderful, thought-provoking short stories in aid of Breast Cancer Care.
Read tales of a woman planning not just what she wants to wear to a school reunion, but who she wants to be, a woman haunted by ghosts from her past and a couple hoping to start a new life in Spain penned by some of the biggest names in fiction.
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Alexander McCall Smith tells stories of perverse meetings, casual dates and romantic encounters, that enthral, sadden, inspire and surprise. A seamless storyteller, this is a bold collection from an author with an extraordinary imagination, offering detailed insights into the fascinating and peculiar world of humanity.
Reviews
A man with a tree growing out of his head? A woman with children made of wax? A bird that can be milked?
Alexander McCall Smith presents more stories following on from his original celebration of African folktales, The Girl Who Married A Lion. Journey into a land where the bizarre is everyday and magic is real.
Reviews
How can a girl possibly have married a lion? How can a man have a tress growing out of his head? And how can a woman have children made of wax?
The Girl Who Married a Lion is a collection of African folktales from Alexander McCall Smith, author of the bestselling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. Surprising and humorous, these beautifully rendered tales demonstrate Alexander’s renowned storytelling skills.
Alexander McCall Smith joins forces with fellow Scottish authors Ian Rankin and Irvine Welsh to write three interlinking stories about Edinburgh. The three writers give three very different takes on Edinburgh life—from Welsh’s Leith junkies to Alexander’s New Town haute bourgeoisie.
Produced by Polygon for the One City charity, which fights social exclusion in the city, all proceeds from the book go to the One City Trust.
Excerpt
Dream Angus comes to you at night and bestows dreams. Just the sight of him may be enough to make you lose your heart, for he is also the god of love, youth and beauty.
In twentieth-century Scotland, Angus’s troubled alter ego searches for his true family and identity. A psychotherapist who helps people understand their dreams, his life seems to parallel that of his mythic namesake, until we ask, could they be one and the same?
An absorbing novella weaving together the tale of the Celtic god and the Scottish scientist, Alexander McCall Smith unites dream and reality, leaving us to wonder: what is life, but the pursuit of our dreams?
Part of the Canongate Myths series; Alexander McCall Smith joins contemporary writers Margaret Atwood, Ali Smith, Philip Pullman and more in re-imagining and re-telling ancient myths.
The brainchild of bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith, historian Alistair Moffat and artist Andrew Crummy, the Great Tapestry of Scotland is an outstanding celebration of thousands of years of Scottish history.
Depicting scenes of historical significance, from the end of the last Ice Age to Dolly the Sheep, over 500 volunteer stitchers spent a total of 55,000 sewing hours and 49,000 meters of yarn on the 140 panels that make up this extraordinary work of art.
With an introduction from Alexander McCall Smith, this book shows in full colour plates the finished panels of the tapestry, one of the biggest community arts projects ever to take place in Scotland—together with descriptive and explanatory material.
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Excerpt
Fatty O’Leary has always wanted to visit the home of his ancestors. So his loving wife Betty plans a trip to Ireland for his 40th birthday—and almost immediately, things go wrong. The seats in economy class on the plane are too small; Irish bathroom furniture is not as commodious as he might have liked; and all the time Fatty must put up with the unthinking cruelty of strangers.
In a hilarious and touching portrayal of a kindly and misunderstood soul, Alexander McCall Smith has created yet another memorable character destined to become an instant favourite.
Winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2015
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Excerpt
Please have your hearts ready for inspection in Trains and Lovers.
Imagine you’re on a train. Think about all the other people on the train with you, what their lives are or have been; the different experiences you’ve all had. But there is one thing that you undoubtedly all share: you have all been in love at one time or another.
In this surprising and poignant story, four strangers meet on a journey from Edinburgh to London. Each has a tale to tell: for Hugh, a brief encounter on a railway platform leads to an impulsive and possibly dangerous decision; Kay recounts the long journey back to her childhood home in Australia and the love that was there; David remembers a teenage friendship that shaded into love; and Andrew makes a discovery that art and people may not be what they seem to be at first glance.
Love may come to us, then, in very different guises, and be unexpected too, but loving others, as one of the characters in this tale observes, is the good thing we do in our lives.
Pack your copy of Trains and Lovers wherever and whenever you travel.
Reviews
Excerpt
This is the story of four people, all strangers to one another, who met on that train, and of how love touched their lives, in very different ways. Love is nothing out of the ordinary, even if we think it is; even if we idealize it, celebrate it in poetry, sentimentalize it in coy valentines. Love happens to just about everyone;, it is like measles or the diseases of childhood; it is as predictable as the losing of milk teeth, or the breaking of a boy’s voice. It may visit us at any time, in our youth but also when we are much older and believe we are beyond its reach; but we are not. It has been described as a toothache, a madness, a divine intoxication—metaphors that reflect the disturbing effect it has on our lives. It may bring surprise, joy, despair, and, occasionally, perfect happiness.
But for each person who is made happy by love, there will be many for whom it turns out to be a cause of regret. That is because it can be so fleeting; one moment it may take our breath away, the next it may leave us bereft. When it does that, love can be like be a haunting, staying with us for year after year; we know that it is over, but somehow we persuade ourselves that it is still there. The heart has more than its fair share of ghosts, and these ghosts may be love, in any of its many forms. I knew one who fell deeply in love at nineteen—smitten, overwhelmed; astonished to find that all he wanted to think about was the other; unbelieving, at first, that this had happened to him. Thirty years later, he found the person he had loved, to whom timidity, if not shame itself, had prevented him from declaring his feelings, regularly coming to him in his dreams. So much had happened in those intervening years, but none of it had been shared, as life had taken them the two of them in very different directions. Nobody would choose to be in love like that, to hold on so strongly to something that was no longer there. Yet we admire such instances of tenacity, finding nobility in loss and in the way in which some people bear it.
If it were not for the train journey on that day, these four would never have met. Journeys may be like that, may bring together people who would otherwise never have known of each other’s existence. In that respect, long journeys have something in common with military service or boarding school, or even the shared experience of some natural disaster. Such things bring us into contact with people we would never have encountered but for the sharing of danger or unhappiness.
Journeys are not only about places, they are also about people, and it may be the people, rather than the places, that we remember. Those with whom one shares a carriage on the Trans-Siberian railway may well be remembered, even if the names of the places in which the train stops are soon lost. Of Kirov, Perm, Omsk and Ussuriysk—all of them stops on that long journey, most travellers, other than the locals, will probably only remember Omsk—for its sheer, prosaic finality, and for the fact that of all possible railway stations in the world, we are here in one called Omsk. I know nothing of Omsk, but it seems to me that its name is redolent of ending, a full stop; not a place for honeymoons or rhapsodies. Omsk.
Or Adelstrop. Yes, I remember Adelstrop, for the train stopped there in the heat—that is Edward Thomas. The poet was on a train journey into rural Oxfordshire, at a time when there was still an England of quiet villages and hedge-bound fields, and when a train might unexpectedly draw to a halt at a small place and there might be birdsong audible behind the hissing of steam. Nothing happens there, other than the stopping of a train and the escape of pent-up steam, but it brings home how suddenly and surprisingly we may be struck by the beauty of a particular place and moment.
Edward Thomas was not alone in sensing the poetic possibilities of the train. Auden’s Night Mail is entirely concerned with a rail journey: This is the Night Mail crossing the border/ Bringing the cheque and the postal order. You can hear the train in those lines; you can feel its rocking motion.
And then there is the poet, Kenneth Koch, who while travelling in Kenya came to a railroad crossing at which this sign was posted: One train may hide another. This was meant, of course, as a warning to drivers of the fact that the train you see may not the only train to reckon with, but it also meant, as Koch points out in his poem, that there are many things in this life that conceal other things. One letter may mean another is on the way; one hitch-hiker may deliberately hide another one by the side of the road; offer to carry one bag and you may find there is another one hidden behind it with the result that you must carry two. And so on through life. Do not count on things coming in ones.
Trains may hide one another, but they may also hide from us what they have in store—the meetings, the disclosures, the exchanged glances, the decisions we make or the insights that strike us on a journey. Trains are everyday, prosaic things, but they can be involved in, be the agents of, so much else, including that part of our human life that for so many far outweighs any other—our need for love—to give it and to receive it in that familiar battle that all of us fight with loneliness.
This is a story of famous landmarks and lost buildings; the people who made them, the people who lived in them and the people who love them.
A Work of Beauty is an intimate portrait of a stunning city by one of Scotland’s greatest storytellers. In it, Alexander McCall Smith curates his owndistinctive story of Edinburgh. Combining his affectionate, incisive wit with a wealth of stunning imagery drawn from Scotland’s national collection of architecture and archaeology, he takes the reader on a unique tour of the city through a series of photographs, maps, drawings and paintings—many never before published.
Just like the city’s architecture, this book moves in an instant from sweeping views to secret, hidden vignettes, painting a portrait of a people’s affair with a stunning urban landscape.
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I love this city, and always shall. I write about it. I dream about it. I walk its streets and see something new each day—traces of faded lettering on the stone, still legible, but just; some facade that I have walked past before and either not noticed or not looked at closely enough; an unregarded doorway with the names, in brass, of those who lived there sixty years ago, the bell-pulls sometimes still in place, as if one might summon long-departed residents from their slumbers; a slice of sky that suddenly reveals itself through an archway; some pokey café or bar out of which wafts a hint of coffee beans or beer; an odd section of railings standing like a line of spears, or a small ironwork balcony dignified, perhaps, by fleurs-de-lys. Every day this city can reveal something old that is for me, in a sense, something new.
I first lived in Edinburgh as a student. It was then, as it still is, a wonderful place to lead the student life, a city every bit as romantic as Heidelberg or Bologna, or any of the other great university cities of Europe. The University of Edinburgh then occupied a significant part of the south side of the city. At its heart was the Old College on South Bridge, set about its generous quadrangle, with its magnificent Playfair Library. This was the seat of the Faculty of Law, and in its lecture halls, with their steeply raked floors and their highly uncomfortable wooden benches, I listened to lectures by gowned professors. Students bought newspapers in those days, and we would read these discreetly in the duller lectures or catch up on sleep. Between lectures, or at lunchtime, we went to the café at the back of the Museum next door. We bought pots of tea there and greasy mutton pies with baked beans. Healthy eating was yet to be invented.
The stone staircases of the Old College were worn down in the middle by the tread of countless student feet. The building reeked of history. In the basement, it was said, there was a trapdoor through which bodies were brought for dissection by the medics. Burke and Hare, of course, had pursued their dreadful trade just down the hill, in the slums of the Cowgate. On a misty night, one might still imagine their shades in the dark closes and entries. We knew, too, that this building had been built on the very spot, Kirk O’Fields, where Henry Darnley, husband of Mary Queen of Scots, had been murdered—blown into the air so high that he landed far from the bed he had occupied that evening. And in a corner of the building were the rooms of the Speculative Society, where Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson, along with so many other Scottish luminaries, had met by candlelight to read each other essays and discuss the topics of the day. The Edinburgh of their time was full of societies like that, and still is. Robert Burns was a member of one.
The law students had their own favourite bar, the Captains Bar in College Street, shared with the locals who lived in the nineteenth century tenements that still dominated that part of the city. It was a long, narrow bar, the walls lined with those decorated brewers’ mirrors that gave old-fashioned bars such character. I remember taking a visiting French law student there one evening and hearing at first hand of the events he had just witnessed in Paris. It was 1968, and Paris was experiencing what seemed to be a revolution. Our visitor had thrown no cobble-stones himself, although he had witnessed the events. It was a long way from sedate Edinburgh.
A few blocks away was, and still is, fortunately, the McEwan Hall, a great round statement of a nineteenth century brewing magnate’s munificence. Inside are classical murals: Greek youths sit at the feet of toga-clad philsophers. Wisdom, says the legend painted above, is the principal thing: therefore get wisdom. We sat examinations in there and were encouraged, perhaps, by that exhortation. And it was there that the installation of the University’s rectors took place, accompanied by the singing of that most poignant of student songs, the ‘Gaudeamus’. To the side of the McEwan Hall was the Men’s Union (in those days they still had separate student facilities), a spiky gothic palace of dining rooms, rowdy bars, a library and a debating chamber that went sharply downmarket at weekends to become the Union Palais dance-hall. Here male students met young women training as nurses or studying at Atholl Crescent’s college of domestic science—fondly, but rudely, called the Dough School. Attitudes were different then; students smoked in libraries, the men wore ties and jackets, and everybody was less worldly-wise, less mature than they are today. It was, I suppose, rather an innocent time.
My student life was lived mostly in the Old Town and the South Side of the city. Later on, I moved to the rather more Bohemian area of Stockbridge, where I bought my first flat, which was small and part of a rather undistinguished tenement. It was solidly built, though, as much of nineteenth century Edinburgh was, and for all its lack of distinction it had a floor of fine broad Canadian pine that, when sanded and sealed, lent brightness to the rooms.
I frequented a coffee bar that had been set up in a building called Duncan’s Land, one of the city’s oldest houses; I had meals in a restaurant on one side of St Stephen’s Street, a street of antique dealers and craftsmen, and met friends in a bar on the other side. I used to go running with a friend along the walkway that follows the Water of Leith from Stockbridge up to the Dean Village. We ran past the temple to Hygena and then under the towering Dean Bridge to the weir and millpond beyond. There was a very peaceful looking house, with a very large window, overlooking that bit of the river—a house that I learned belonged to the Polish artist Alexander Zyw. Not far away, clinging to the face of the cliff, was a house that seemed to grow out of the bare rock, a seemingly impossible feat of architecture. Here, more than anywhere else in the city, it may be brought home to anybody who is prepared to crane his or her neck, that this is a place that has never been inhibited by hills and ridges.
Fresh from university, Emma Woodhouse arrives home in Norfolk ready to embark on adult life with a splash. Her sister, Isabella, has been whisked away on a motorbike to London, and Emma’s astute governess, Miss Taylor, is at a loose end watching Mr Woodhouse worry. Someone is needed to rule the roost and that person, Emma knows, is her.
Prepare to meet a young woman who thinks she knows everything. Emma spends her increasingly free time rearranging the family home of Hartfield, at the helm of society dinner parties, or instructing her new protégée, Harriet Smith. If you’re Emma Woodhouse, you don’t have to be in London to find parties or amusement—or make trouble.
But for someone who knows everything, Emma doesn’t know her own heart. And there is only one person who can unsettle Emma’s indestructible confidence: her friend and neighbour George Knightley. Has this young lady finally met her match?
Ever alive to the social comedy of village life, Alexander McCall Smith’s Emma is a true modern delight. Carriages have been replaced by Mini Coopers and cups of tea by cappuccinos, but Alexander McCall Smith’s sparkling satire and cozy sensibility are the perfect match for Jane Austen’s beloved tale.
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With a failed marriage behind her, La—short for Lavender—moves to the Suffolk countryside on the eve of the Second World War to nurse her broken heart. Lonely and at a loss, a friend encourages her to bring together the villagers and the men from the local airbase by forming an amateur orchestra. One of her musicians is Feliks, a handsome and enigmatic Polish refugee, and when a close friendship blossoms between the two, La finds her feelings stirring to life again.
Poignant, tender and inspiring, La’s Orchestra Saves the World celebrates the power of love, friendship and the extraordinary healing power of music in the tragic shadow of war.
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Independent and determined, at the age of four Clover chooses her own name. Aged six, she falls in love with her best friend, James.
But in the adult world, things are not so simple. When Clover’s mother finds she’s fallen out of love with her husband, she realises that James’s father is interested in her.
As the children grow into adulthood, their connection becomes more complicated. James drifts away from Clover, but she keeps him in her sights. She attends the same college in Scotland, then follows him to London, Sydney, and Singapore, rebuilding her life in every city, and hoping each time that James will see what he is missing.
As Clover and James, and their parents, navigate a baffling maze of emotion, so we are given a beautiful tale about how love, even if unrequited, can shape a life.
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Alexander McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street series is the world’s longest running serial novel. Readers all over the world delight in his amusing characters and descriptions of the city of Edinburgh.
With The 44 Scotland Street Cookbook fans can now immerse themselves in the world of Edinburgh’s New Town and eat like their favourite characters. Anna Marshall has ransacked the pages (and cupboards!) of 44 Scotland Street to find all the best snacks, treats and dinners enjoyed by its inhabitants.
Step into the world of Edinburgh foodies and enjoy Big Lou’s ‘Off the Record’ Bacon Rolls, Bertie’s much-loved Panforte di Sienna or Angus Lordie’s famous cheese scones.
‘I hope that this work will strengthen the friendship that readers of the Scotland Street series have with the inhabitants of that address. I am most grateful to Anna for writing this cookbook. She has helped to make the world of Bertie, Big Lou, Domenica and all the others come to life. They are inviting you in. The table is laid. Please join them.’ – Alexander McCall Smith
About the author: Anna Marshall is an arts administrator, events organiser, publicist and fundraiser. She has been working with Alexander McCall Smith for 13 years, giving her an intimate knowledge of the 44 Scotland Street series. She lives on a farm in the Scottish Borders, farming sheep and cows and publishing recipes on the farm’s website.
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Pianos and Flowers is a remarkable gift of engaging short stories imagined by one the world’s greatest story writers.
Earlier this year, Alexander McCall Smith met the Scottish editor of The Sunday Times and agreed to write a series of short stories which would run in the paper. The Sunday Times opened up their archive of photographs and Alexander selected anonymous, black and white pictures, imagined the story behind the scenes depicted, and created delightfully playful stories to enchant the reader. These stories appeared in the paper but since then, Alexander has reshaped them, added new stories and they have now grown into a powerful, hugely entertaining collection of tales of love and romance.
When I was asked by the The Sunday Times to write a number of short stories for the newspaper, I suggested that I should select photographs from their extensive photographic archive, and create stories based on what I imagined the pictures depicted. Six of the stories were published in the paper – a few of them are included here, but the rest are new. We do not know, of course, who the people in these photographs were, nor what they were up to. They were almost certainly not doing what I say they are, but that is the joy of looking at photographs in this way: from the tiniest visual clue we can create a whole hinterland of experience – of love, of hope, of simply being human.
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