Lady detectives to librettos: Alexander McCall Smith's life in writing

Alexander McCall Smith chortles with amusement as he chops open the top of his boiled egg. Bubbles of mirth rise as he hypothesises about endless 
possibilities of incongruous elements colliding in bizarre situations. His childlike imagination, a fascination with people and love of anything silly, as well as his unfailing propensity to believe in kindness and the triumph of goodness over evil, initially led to his success as a writer of children’s books. He then began his bestselling series, The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Most people familiar with his work know of his bubbly, easily delineated characters, deceptively effortless prose and penchant for aphoristic titles and happy endings.  

The 66-year-old publishing anomaly grows more prolific with each passing year. Each year he writes at least three books to add to his existing series, The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, The Philosophy Club and 44 Scotland Street. In between he writes about subjects that captivate him (such as the recent homage What WH Auden Can Do for You), adds to the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series, adapts some of his novels for BBC radio serialisations, and writes standalone novels (such as 2013’s Trains and Lovers and a modern-day reimagining of Jane Austen’s Emma).  

In addition, he and his wife, Elizabeth, travel widely for both work and pleasure. 
Last year alone they made four trips to North America, a trip to Australia and a separate trip to New Zealand. Although he calls the travel itself “a bit of a bind”, he says that meeting so many readers during the year is “tremendously nice”.  His trips also serve as a source of inspiration and amusement.

Reflecting on his fourth trip to the US last year at the behest of the American Library Association – which held its annual conference in Las Vegas – he starts chuckling softly. “You  could just imagine the potential disasters –  some of them would lose all their money – some of them wouldn’t come back.” 
Describing the casino, he says, “You can’t underestimate the bad taste – it’s on a cosmic scale. I won $180!”  

McCall Smith, known to friends as Sandy, peals off in laughter again as he recalls a trip to the Florida Keys. “We went to a party at Hemingway’s house – a very nice party with a jazz band playing under the trees. A chap came up to me and said he was a reader of the books. He was a very respectable-looking man who lived there. And then he said, ‘Here’s what we’ll do. Let’s all go off to the nude bar.’

"I couldn’t believe it – I had met him five minutes before!”

Now that he is in the position to pick and choose the projects that most interest him, he does just that. While the literati roundly scoffed at his modern adaptation of Emma, he maintains that he enjoyed the process. “I’m a great Jane Austen fan and I believe retelling Emma in a modern context is a great deal of fun.

"It is a wonderfully interesting novel because Emma represents the challenge of conveying a character who is fundamentally a pain in the neck, at the beginning anyway, and who becomes nicer as the book goes on. And at the same time we can’t dislike her, because if people dislike the central character of a book, they won’t persist. They actually have to like fictional characters.”

McCall Smith’s divergent career path and interests are positively millennial. Aside from being a bestselling novelist and an Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh, he’s the patron for the Alliance for Rabies Control, author of Creating Humans: Ethical Questions where Reproduction and Science Collide and various other academic tomes, and a philanthropist who once sat on the board of Unesco’s International Bioethics Committee.

He plays the bassoon for fun and founded The Really Terrible Orchestra, sails in the Caribbean annually, is patron of the Rosebank Theatre and founded a fellowship at the University of Edinburgh (first occupied by Auden’s executor, Edward Mendelson). McCall Smith’s newest hobby is the penning of librettos. He became enamoured with the process when he was commissioned to write an opera that the Royal Scottish National Orchestra performed at last year’s Commonwealth Games.

“I like working with composers and I quite enjoy writing poetry,” he says. At the moment he’s writing an opera about Anthony Blunt, one of the infamous Cambridge Five Soviet spies, with Ben McIntyre, bestselling author of several non-fiction espionage books. In addition to his creative projects, he devotes a lot of time to book events, theatres, launches, his social media accounts and in interviews; smiling for cameras, signing his own novels.

How does he fit it all in? “I do manage to write while I travel,” he says, eyes twinkling. “I can write on planes and in hotels, so I keep it going. I’m very fortunate in that I write quite quickly. I also have chunks of time set aside for writing. I often have two novels on the go at the same time but I prefer to write one and then move on to the next one. The way I work is to go straight at it and I have a very general idea of what the book’s going to be, a skeleton.

“I think that a large amount of fiction emanates from the subconscious, so I find if I start it ends itself, in a sense,” he says when asked about his creative process. “Things will happen as I write which I hadn’t anticipated. And I’ll often be surprised by the direction that a book takes. Events will occur that haven’t been planned. In a sense, with this you’re allowing the characters to lead their lives under your gaze – but nonetheless, lead their lives themselves.” After politely answering my questions and ordering me coffee, McCall Smith stops suddenly. “I’ve been going on about myself,” he says. “How are things with you?”

The Handsome Man’s Deluxe Café is published by Jonathan Ball and is available from decent bookshops.