Author visits Scotland Street's Holy heartland

Published on Saturday 8 December 2007 01:14

IN EDINBURGH, the No 23 is easily the city's most haut bourgeois bus route, linking Trinity to Morningside.

And when it stops briefly, at Holy Corner in Bruntsfield, it is at the centre of a magnetic, classy, fictional universe.

Consider the evidence. Only 50 yards away is the delicatessen where, if only it existed, you'd find novelist Alexander McCall Smith's moral philosopher detective Isabel Dalhousie dropping in on her niece Kat, who runs it. Take the No 23 further into deepest Morningside and you'd pass a series of landmarks from his 44 Scotland Street series in The Scotsman: the Starbucks where Pat and Matthew have sipped lattes, the Church Hill Theatre where Ramsey Dunbarton used to tread the boards in amateur operatic performances; the charity shop where a Peploe painting was discovered.

Get off the bus at Holy Corner - the only place in Britain with four churches at a crossroads - and you are, as Rev John Smith, minister of Morningside United Church, says "right in the centre of McCall Smith territory".

For proof, look at the congregation that filed into his church on Thursday evening when McCall Smith was speaking about his books. A full church, it was noted. How often do you see that, apart from Christmas and occasional funerals?

So what kind of place is "McCall Smith territory"? In microcosm, it is probably something similar to Mr Smith's small but well-heeled parish of some 2,000 souls, with Grange, Merchiston, south Bruntsfield and north Morningside on its boundaries. Somewhere that knows its place - and knows its place is slightly superior to most other places you can think of.

Among those 2,000 souls, the most famous are the writers: JK Rowling lives a short walk away in one direction; Ian Rankin and McCall Smith next-door-but-one in another. Cardinal O'Brien, head of the Scotland's Catholics, is only a couple of hundred yards away in a third.

"He is my parishioner," smiles Rev Smith. "I do tell him we're not seeing him here in church often enough." Last year, though, the cardinal did come into the church to give its annual lecture; on Thursday it was McCall Smith's turn. And this was the place to see the most quintessentially Edinburgh audience.

They're a hard-headed, spikily intelligent bunch, the Edinbourgeoisie, and they don't let their guard down for just anyone. Yet watching their faces as McCall Smith begins his talk, they visibly relax. He talks, effortlessly and engagingly and completely without notes, about playing in the Really Terrible Orchestra, about visiting the Botswana set of Anthony Minghella's 10 million feature film.

But most of all he talks about 44 Scotland Street, and here he has the audience in the palm of his hand. They know its gently comedic world almost as well as its creator: know the private schools the six-year-old saxophone-playing Bertie is sent to by his pushy mother Irene, and all the story's other settings. Heads nod when McCall Smith says that Edinburgh does indeed "have a major problem with excessively pushy mothers".

Senga Bate, from Bruntsfield, laughs out loud at that. "What I love about his writing is the way his characters are so well drawn," she says later. "I know lots of people like Irene in Bruntsfield. And it's a stroke of genius having this daily novel in The Scotsman, building up the characters with each issue and keeping everyone waiting for more."

The odd thing about his Edinburgh stories, says McCall Smith, a genial figure in crushed strawberry corduroy trousers, double-breasted blazer and bow-tie, dispensing bonhomie and infectious giggles from in front of the altar, is that when he began writing them, he thought they'd only have local appeal. "But the world has become a frightening place, and people see a place with a strong civic sense like Edinburgh; they warm to it."

That very morning he opened his mail to find the first copy of the Latvian translation of 44 Scotland Street, to add to the Lithuanian, Polish, German, Italian and French editions on his study's shelves.

Later that evening there will be people like Susie Palmer, all the way from Wyoming to visit her daughter Sarah, an exchange student at Napier University. "I'm such a fan of his books," she says, waiting in the signing queue, "and it's great to see all these places mentioned in them. When my daughter told me he was speaking tonight and we'd got tickets, I jumped for joy."

So it's not just Edinburgh that laps up his stories, though most of the questions are indeed about 44 Scotland Street and its mesmerisingly comfortable, well-ordered world. Even here in the moneyed middle of the No 23's winding route ("the only bus I've ever been on" McCall Smith jokes) is a direct, powerful and heartfelt link to Africa.

As he reads a moving section from his next Botswana novel, in which Mma Ramotswe, reduced to selling her cattle, remembers her dead father, you could hear a pin drop. "What is money but a human conceit," says Mma Ramotswe, "so much less than love and happiness."

I meet a young Zimbabwean, recently arrived in Edinburgh, whose relatives, like Mma Ramotswe, have had to sell their cattle. "What amazes me," says Chido Mpamhanaga, "is the joy of his writing, the way it's got such a gentle, African spirituality. He seems to do it without effort. He seems to understand."

And whether it's about dirt-poor Africa or moneyed Merchiston, perhaps he really does.

Action-packed life of much-loved writer

A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH

Books written in 2007:

Three adult novels:

• The Miracle at Speedy Motors, ninth in the worldwide bestselling Mma Ramotswe series (out in spring);

• The Careful Use of Compliments, third in the series starring Merchiston moral philosopher Isabel Dalhousie, (out in October);

• The World According to Bertie, fourth in the 44 Scotland Street series (out in August);

• Plus one children's novel: Akimbo and the Baboons (out next March).

Also: Short opera (Dream Angus for Scottish Opera); film script (nature-based feature film for the Weinstein company); four Mma Ramotswe radio adaptations for BBC series (16 done so far); lyrics for Capella Nova's "Scotland at Night" later this month in Glasgow and Edinburgh; and 30,000 words of journalism and short stories

Travel: About 94,000 miles last year alone (carbon-offset).

Countries visited: Cayman Islands; Finland; Sweden; US (two major promotion tours); Canada (ditto); Rwanda; Botswana (visit to set of first Mma Ramotswe film, to be shown in March); Australia; France; Denmark; Jamaica; Ireland; England.

Audiences: At least 36,000 people in 12 countries, from small events (70 at the Melrose Literary Society this week) to 2,000-seat venues in America

Most devoted fans: Possibly a New Zealand couple who act out lives as Mma Ramotswe and Mr JLB Matekoni.