Alexander McCall Smith

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Alexander McCall Smith
AlexanderMcCallSmith.jpg
Born (1948-08-24) 24 August 1948 (age 64)
Bulawayo, Rhodesia
Nationality Scottish
Citizenship United Kingdom
Genres Fiction, Crime fiction, Children's books, Academic non-fiction
www.alexandermccallsmith.co.uk

R. Alexander "Sandy" McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE, (born 24 August 1948) is a Rhodesian-born Scottish 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]

Contents

Biography [edit]

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.[2] 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.[3] 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.[2]

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).[4] 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 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 Commission 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.[5] 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,[6] for whom he wrote the libretto of their first production, a version of Macbeth set among a troop of baboons in the Okavango Delta.[7][8] He is also the author of a testimonial in The Future of the NHS (2006).[9] 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.[citation needed]

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.[10] 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.[11]

Bibliography [edit]

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series [edit]

Professor Dr von Igelfeld Entertainments [edit]

The Sunday Philosophy Club Series [edit]

also known as Isabel Dalhousie Mysteries

44 Scotland Street Series [edit]

Corduroy Mansions [edit]

Other novels [edit]

Short story collections [edit]

  • 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

Other short stories [edit]

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

Children's books [edit]

Academic texts [edit]

  • 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)
  • 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 [edit]

Portal icon Children's literature portal

References [edit]

  1. ^ Philby, Charlotte (19 JUNE 2010). "Alexander McCall Smith: The No1 novelist's guide to Edinburgh". The Independent. Retrieved 2012-08-26. 
  2. ^ a b Hunter, Jeffrey W. (2009). Contemporary Literary Criticism. Detroit, Michigan: Gale. ISBN 978-1-4144-1944-2. 
  3. ^ Nicoll, Ruaridh (2004-05-02). "Handy Sandy". The Observer. Retrieved 2008-05-12. 
  4. ^ Wands, D C and P G (16-May-2011). "Alexander McCall Smith". Fantastic Fiction. Retrieved 25 May 2011. 
  5. ^ "New Year Honours—United Kingdom". The London Gazette. 2006-12-29. Retrieved 2009-01-03. [dead link]
  6. ^ Times article
  7. ^ AFP news report on the ‘Okavango Macbeth’
  8. ^ The Okavango Macbeth, More Information
  9. ^ (ISBN 1-85811-369-5) edited by Dr Michelle Tempest
  10. ^ Oxfam: Ox-Tales
  11. ^ Kirkus Reviews. New York City, New York: The Nielsen Company. 2005. ISSN 0042-6598. 
  12. ^ Maclean Dubois; 1st Edition edition (1997) Retrieved 2012-12-05.
  13. ^ The Great Cake Mystery

External links [edit]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Alexander McCall Smith
Novel series by Alexander McCall Smith
The No. 1 Ladies'
Detective Agency
Professor Dr von Igelfeld
The Sunday
Philosophy Club
44 Scotland Street
Corduroy Mansions
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