A man of many parts - Alexander McCall Smith

Five novels in four years, with a baboon opera and an updated literary classic in the works, is a feat for any writer. But with his latest 44 Scotland Street novel about to be launched at The Scotsman in a special reader event, Alexander McCall Smith shows no sign of tiring, says David Robinson IN HIS great series of love poems Dain do Eimhir (Poems to Eimhir), the poet Sorley MacLean writes about visiting Edinburgh. When it wasn't lit up by love, he found it "a grey town without darting sun"; when it was, it became transformed – "refulgent , white-starred". When Alexander McCall Smith writes about Edinburgh in 44 Scotland Street, it undergoes a similar transformation. The city sloughs off its everyday worries, its reputed unfriendliness, its fears of crime, its daily round of petty annoyances. Instead, it becomes an easier... [read full story]