Alexander McCall Smith | Human Kindness | Edinburgh International Book Festival

Last year, the much-loved Alexander McCall Smith hit a purple patch and had written even more books than ever. There’s The Joy and Light Bus Company - a new title in the phenomenal 'No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency' series, while 'Your Inner Hedgehog' is a Professor von Igelfeld Entertainment - the first in that series for a decade. Alongside that - and published during the Festival - there’s a standalone novel, 'The Pavilion in the Clouds', set in the tea plantations of Sri Lanka.
And while all of McCall Smith’s novels are packed with humour, perhaps the funniest are his ‘Scandi Blanc’ series featuring Detective Varg. This summer Varg stars in 'The Man with the Silver Saab'. But when it comes to Book Festival events, it doesn’t matter so much whether you’re a McCall Smith completist or just opening up your first Mma Ramotswe story. Joining the Edinburgh writer as he talks to fellow author Jamie Jauncey is simply taking a journey into a world of essential human kindness: a breath of fresh Scottish air.
📚 EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL 2021 📚
This event was part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2021, a hybrid book festival with a fabulous online programme of over 250 events for adults and children.
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[@maryadams2347]

Lovely man. His books should be available on prescription. Much better than antidepressants.

[@elainemagson213]

He is the antidote to all that threatens these days to swamp us into pessimism. His deep sympathy for humans is moving, funny, never trite. (I wish I knew him so that I too could call him Sandy. What a lovely man.)

[@aussiemumlovesmusic]

One of the loveliest authors to read when you're feeling a bit flat

[@suzannejenks2608]

What a wonderful hour . I to am ,'So Yesterday'and glad to be .I enjoy everyone off your books and find them so uplifting, if I'm down I just reach for one of your books and life is good again.Your books should be on prescription .Thank you so much.

[@georgiannacook8874]

Thank you so much for your books and for the philosophy they impart. I try very hard to practice what I refer to as the AMS method of dealing with people. Reaching out and being kind because I don't know what they are dealing with and I have found it to be so relaxing to practice this and it's all because of you. Our daughter visited the Vanola Crolla store when she was in Edinbough recently and brought back a signed copy of The Perfect Passion Company. I am just finishing some of one of your other books so as soon as I finish that I will start on that book.. Olivia told my daughter that you are a very nice man and stop in there all the time and that you had managed to include her in one of your 44 Scotland Street books. I look forward to reading more of your books.

[@mairianncullen8753]

Wow, that lad made the fiddle sing! 👍And thank you to Alexander McCall Smith for his astonishingly productive creativity and optimism.

[@paulworthington8666]

We might have good reason to hope that tomorow will look more like the best of yesterday than the worst of the mess of today.

[@pamelaroyce5285]

I, too, love all those unfashionable things. What a lovely hour with a civilized gentleman. Thank you, Edinburgh International Book Festival for providing a roving microphone so that the viewing audience can hear the question as well as the answer. Guests and panelists often forget to repeat a question before answering it. The simultaneous transcript is also greatly appreciated by those of us with hearing impairments.

[@psacclose9823]

Thank you so so much for giving us the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

[@fredlifsitz7411]

AMS is a gift to all humanity. Love his extraordinary talks- and books!

[@paulworthington8666]

I have an ancient (2007) non-"smart" mobile phone that I use to call home when away I use email. But since many friends and relatives have even given up email for ridiculous "aps", I just write to them by post - i.e. cards or letters on paper in envelopes with postage stamps on them. The friends and relatives that respond in the same way are the ones whose bond I value. The others are a more or less sad loss. Often less. I insist on living out my already pretty long life in the real world. A bit of computery, like Email, and KZbin is fine within limits. But I buy wonderful books, including those by the astonishingly creative and totally earth-bound sound life-loving Alexander M S from the kind young ladies in our local bookshop. They are human. The internet isn't. Alexander is a great giver of the gift of the love of life.

[@sanzaiane]

Thank you! Love so much his books, thank you! So beautiful, beautiful soul!

[@max-nm6qx]

.❤❤❤

[@2eleven48]

He certainly is an entertaining, eloquent, engaging man, and one must admire him for his erudition, wit and well-meaning. However, I often feel sorry for his characters in that they don't seem to have a life of their own, but are manipulated to mouth the moral views in rather lecturing, over-egging, if not hectoring, messages by McCall Smith. I can ignore substantial paragraphs of his books, where there is the sense of, oh, dear, he's off again, telling me how I should think and feel.

[@emanuelacomerio5334]

No. Non sono d'accordo. Perche" tanto odio razziale verso i neri? Perche' non si capisce che l'odio razziale e" male? Perche' non si riesce a scrivere senza che, anche nella selezione delle parole, il razzismo trasudi da ogni poro?

[@pamelaroyce5285]

You misunderstood his comment. The author expressed no hatred of black people at all. Indeed, he was born and raised in Zimbabwe and writes a marvelous series of novels about black African people in Botswana with great affection and respect. He mentioned children who were black only as he read the thoughts of his fictitious character Nicola (Bertie's grandmother) as she viewed a museum exhibit that showed children -- "white" children -- who were black with coal dust. These were young children who were deprived of education and playtime so that they could be put to work in coal mines. That's what made them black: they were covered in carcinogenic coal dust. And that's what made the grandmother view the photos with sadness.

[@emanuelacomerio5334]

@@pamelaroyce5285 cara Pamela, ti ringrazio per la saggia profusione difensiva dell'autore che scrive praticamente la storia dello Botswana e della gente del Botswana mediante novel: quello delle novelle storiografiche e' appunto un vecchio chiche mutuato da culture imperialiste di varia etichetta. Io resto del mio pensiero. Il tema, delicato e di attualita', e' stato affrontato dal premio nobel letteratura 2021. C'e' un legame tra imperialismo e culture coloniali in Africa? Io te lo spieghero' a modo mio e in termini semplici comprensibili a tutti. La risposta e' si come culo e camicia. Come insegna l'imperialismo spagnolo e britannico, l'importante e' tenere le mani in pasta in spagna o uk e le mutande in Africa o India.