At the Dymocks Literary Lunch Alexander McCall Smith delighted the audience with a bravura performance which was full of wit, wisdom, fascinating anecdotes and incongruous humour.
He commenced his talk with a joke about microphones failing and apologised in advance if those before him were to cut out (they did not). While he was living in Botswana he penned his first novel, ‘The Number One Lady’s Detective Agency’. He found the people in. Botswana charming and delightful and sought to incorporate these elements in his novel. He disclosed that the novel could well have been about a laundry with the ladies finding interesting items in patrons pockets. He wisely choose the detective profession. He was pleased with Anthony Minghella’s production of the book and sadly this was Minghella’s last film before his passing.
He then admitted to the audience that he does a lot of his writing on planes because of time constraints and an absence of disturbance. On one such flight McCall Smith was delighted to see that his neighbouring female passenger was reading the latest book in his detective agency series. McCall Smith advised that there would be another book in the series. The lady was startled as she didn’t know who he was. It took some for him to mollify her.
He was asked how he could write so prolifically and if he was heavily edited. As to the latter he was not, and as to the former he put it down to a fertile subconscious.
Being so successful, his publisher would insist that he would provide them with a title before he had written his next novel. Obligingly he did with the word horse in the title whereupon the publisher rushed out and had produced a book jacket featuring a horse. As it turned out the novel never mentioned a horse and the book jacket and title was scrapped.
He has also written the 44 Scotland Street series. McCall Smith’s latest novel in this series deals with a sweet boy called Bertie and over the years has aged him from 6 to 7 years old.
McCall Smith observed that his town of Edinburgh has a group of women who are over pushy as far as their children are concerned. Bertie was by now fluent in Italian and undertaking a rigorous, progressive education.
All Bertie wants is to be an average boy who plays with other boys, to go camping and fishing, and to perhaps get a Swiss army knife. He meets a boy who has an impressive collection of Swiss army knives and his heart was filled with joy.
Bertie’s mother, who seems to be the villain in the piece, has taken a lover and whilst at the beach drowns and then is washed ashore, having been amongst the fish that Bertie is so desperate to catch.
McCall Smith has written in a number of genres including spy novels. The latest spy novel he is working on is based on a true life Australian Archie Clark who worked for the British Foreign Office. Whilst in Mesopotamia, during the last days of the Ottoman Empire, he was reassigned to Moscow whilst Stalin was in power. Stalin took a lighting to him and when he was reassigned to Washington gave him a farewell present of a dwarf. Clark accepted the dwarf because if he did not, the dwarf would be shot. At the British Embassy in Washington the Russian dwarf unwittingly created a stir.
In that Embassy there was a British official Don Maclean feeding espionage documents to Russia. . McLean thought that the dwarf was a competing Soviet spy. To calm things down Clark sent his dwarf to Scotland to manage his estate. The dwarf turned out to be a very capable manager.
On another note and sidelight, McCall Smith and his wife, for some reason, started a hugely popular venture whereby they called on bad musicians to form an orchestra. There was a rush of prospective members, most of whom playeed the clarinet.
The orchestra was so successful, that it toured in. New York and the Netherlands. At a concert in Stockholm the conductor had to halt the performance as half the musicians were playing a completely different score from the other half.
McCall Smith remarked on how the language used by pilots and flight attendants bore very little resemblance to everyday English. He then recited his very clever poem pointing out the incongruity of commercial airlines communications.
This created a cumulative amusement for the audience as his talk came to an all too soon end.
McCall Smith conveyed these tales with the elan, humour and subtle suaveness of a master raconteur. It seemed his words flowed as easily and wittily as his prolific backlog of novels and occasional poetry. He has a number of novels planned and will prbably be getting stuck in to them on the long flight from Sydney to Edinburgh.
Test and photos by Ben Apfelbaum