Alexander McCall Smith

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and five, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is an author. At the age of fifty he published the first of a series of books that were to make him famous. Up until then he had led a respectable academic life as a lecturer and then professor in law and as the author of less successful comic fiction and legal monographs, including The Forensic Aspects of Sleep.

Presenter0:49

The book that changed all that is called The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency, and has as its heroine a Botswanan lady of traditional build called Precious

Presenter0:59

The British readership of her adventures seemed at first to indicate that she should slide into the relative obscurity of her author's previous books, but bit by bit in America and in the wake of the horror of nine eleven the soothing, honest, and witty story of good people leading decent lives became a huge success. There've now been six books on the same theme, and last year their creator was made Author of the Year at the British Book Awards. There is, he says, a role for literature which affirms without being sentimental or romanticising too much. He is Alexander McCall Smith.

Presenter1:36

You are, Sandy, a a publishing phenomenon, really. I mean, it it must have turned your life on its head, this thing that's happened to you.

Alexander McCall Smith1:44

Yes, it did. It was totally unexpected. Indeed, even to day I have to pinch myself to realize that it's happened.

Presenter1:52

But when did it all begin? When did you first feel Mara Motzwi coming on, as it were?

Alexander McCall Smith1:58

Well, I suppose the very beginning of the whole thing goes back to nineteen eighty, when uh I went across to Botswana on a number of occasions to visit friends of mine. And uh on one particular occasion I went with my uh hostess to visit somebody in the village who was going to give them a chicken for lunch the next day. And we went off to see this woman, and I shall always remember her. Uh she was wearing a red dress and she was traditionally built, and there was a chicken pecking around in the yard, and the chicken was unaware of the mortal peril in which it was, and she chased the chicken, caught it eventually, and promptly wrung its neck. And I thought what a remarkable woman and I wondered about her life and what lay behind it, and I thought one day I might write about a woman like that in Botswana.

Presenter2:46

So how how how soon before you did?

Alexander McCall Smith2:48

Years passed, um I suppose about fifteen years later, I decided to sit down and write a story about uh a woman uh from Botswana, and uh I sat there and uh said there was this woman called Precious Romotswi and she sells the cattle left her by her father and decides to start a business and I had no idea that I would write Detective Agency, but I put in detective agency. It could have been something quite different.

Presenter3:15

And you can't explain that to yourself, detective agency?

Alexander McCall Smith3:17

No, I can't. I really can't. And uh happy the day that I'm decided to make it a detective agency because obviously that provided a very good vehicle for bringing in all sorts of people.

Presenter3:27

Exactly. I mean, she and she isn't, I suppose, so much a detective, um, for those people who haven't met her. I mean, she's more a kind of sensible friend, really, isn't she? She's full of kind of

Presenter3:37

Common sense.

Alexander McCall Smith3:38

That's right. She's a sort of agony aunt. She's a sort of friend, as you say. She says that her role is to help people with the problems in their lives, so she does that.

Presenter3:48

But what she represents, as I was indicating in my introduction, is a kind of human decency, isn't it? And and am I right in suggesting that that is why you feel she's hit a spot, that that you've these books have become so successful?

Alexander McCall Smith4:03

I think that's true. I think that people rather like reading about good people, and Mara Matsui is a very good person. And I think that people feel that this is a very distressing world, and indeed it is a very distressing world in which we live. And if people can go somewhere through a book where certain values that they would like to believe in are given form and applied, they feel strengthened and encouraged. And I think that that's a legitimate thing for literature to do.

Presenter4:35

Okay, we're sending you to a desert island. Um we want eight records from you. What's the first one you'll play?

Alexander McCall Smith4:41

Well, I think some Mozart. It's from Cosifantutti, which I really love. It's a piece of music which I think is so peaceful and has such a wonderful message in it. If you're going on a journey, may your journey be an easy one. May the winds that take you off be gentle ones.

Speaker 35:44

Most of the time.

Presenter5:50

Suave Silvento, there we are underway to our desert island with Mozart's Cosi Fantuti performed by Kiri Tikanoa Ann Murray and Perruccio Ferlanetto with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by James Levine.

Presenter6:03

Um so you wrote the first book about Mara Motsui, uh Sandy, in about'ninety six. It was published in'ninety eight, and as I suggested in the introduction, it might have rested in a kind of comfortable obscurity. But

Presenter6:17

Something happened that made it different. What happened?

Alexander McCall Smith6:21

Well, it was published initially by a small publisher in Edinburgh, and we had some generous reviews. The critics were very kind, but nothing really happened. And then the books were imported into the United States by Columbia University Press, and bookstores ordered five copies here and there. And then a word of mouth effect started. And the New York Times, that great and good newspaper, then did a whole page article about my books, which attracted the attention, I think, of the large publishers in New York.

Presenter6:52

Yeah.

Speaker 36:52

Uh

Presenter6:52

Yeah.

Presenter7:01

But it was sort of Middle America word of mouth. I mean, the holy grail of publishing, really. No no great advertising marketing funds behind this. People saying, We want to read this book or these books.

Alexander McCall Smith7:12

That's absolutely right. Publishers love that sort of thing. They call it organic growth, organic books. And organic books.

Presenter7:18

Bank

Presenter7:19

Doesn't happen very often.

Alexander McCall Smith7:20

No, it doesn't. And they don't have to spend any money on them. And people go off and buy the books. So it's a dream for publishers, or organic growth.

Presenter7:28

And now Precious Remotsu is translated into 32 languages.

Alexander McCall Smith7:33

I think that we've had a bit of progress since that figure. We're up to thirty-four. We've recently added Indonesian and I forget what the other one is, but we were.

Presenter7:37

34 languages.

Presenter7:42

Universal appeal, even in Las Vegas. I gather you you when you travel around you also uh talk to the Las Vegas Literary Society, or was that just another fictional invention of

Alexander McCall Smith7:52

They exist. I talked to the Las Vegas Literary Society. I had lunch with the Las Vegas Literary Society, and most generous and agreeable hosts they were.

Presenter8:01

And and are these ladies of voluptuous abundance like precious remotes we in the main?

Alexander McCall Smith8:05

No, they aren't as as traditionally built as Maramatsui is because they're all on special diets. Whatever is the fashionable diet of the time, the literary ladies will will be on it.

Presenter8:14

On it.

Alexander McCall Smith8:16

Yeah.

Presenter8:16

Record number two.

Alexander McCall Smith8:18

That is Paul Robeson singing My Lindy Loo.

Alexander McCall Smith8:23

It means a great deal to me because when I was a boy we had one of those windy up gramophones and you wound it up and then you put the seventy eight on and we had a lot of Paul Robeson. But Lindy Loo is a is a lovely, lovely song, and it reminds me of Winding Up the Gramophone.

Speaker 28:41

Linde, did you hear that mockingbird singing last night? He was singing so sweet in the moonlight.

Alexander McCall Smith8:50

Only

Presenter8:51

B

Speaker 28:57

In the yard.

Speaker 28:59

Busting his heart with melody, I know he was seen.

Presenter9:07

Yeah, but

Presenter9:09

Paul Robeson and Marlindi Lew, and that was recorded in 1933. It's not entirely surprising, Alexander McCall Smith, that you chose to set this story in Africa. It's where you were born and brought up. You're a boy from Bulawayo, born shortly after the war, when it was Rhodesia. Your father was from Scotland. He was a public prosecutor out there.

Alexander McCall Smith9:27

Public prosecutor out there.

Presenter9:29

Was it the classic colonial existence that we would expect then?

Alexander McCall Smith9:33

It probably was, yes, it was the tail end of the uh British colonial period, and uh we we lived in it.

Presenter9:42

But did you assume you'd go on living there forever, or did you were you encouraged to uh that the future lay elsewhere?

Alexander McCall Smith9:49

I think that probably an awful lot of people living in that society uh understood that the clock was ticking against it and uh had some notion of their future being elsewhere and and I suppose I d did that as well.

Presenter10:03

And your mother wa was a writer herself, or a bit of a writer. What did what did she write?

Alexander McCall Smith10:07

Well, sh she she wasn't a published writer, but she she was involved.

Alexander McCall Smith10:12

for as long as I can remember, really, uh in the writing of uh of a single book.

Alexander McCall Smith10:17

which she wrote on yellow paper, and this pile of manuscript got higher and higher, but none of us was ever allowed to read it. So this was all typed out in the background, and the pile of manuscript grew um larger and larger.

Presenter10:35

Then you never read it?

Alexander McCall Smith10:36

Well, she she didn't want anyone to read it, and she she left instructions that it should be destroyed.

Alexander McCall Smith10:41

Um after her death.

Presenter10:42

Very sad though, really.

Alexander McCall Smith10:43

Who's that?

Alexander McCall Smith10:44

It's a sad story, isn't it?

Presenter10:45

Somebody's life's work there. Do you think that's part of what fired you to write the the need to to publish, as it were, to make up for her unrewarded labours?

Alexander McCall Smith10:55

Well, I suppose if uh if I was on the uh analyst's couch that conclusion might be might be drawn. Uh I don't know. Uh you were writing, weren't you? Well, I was writing. I I wrote as as a boy. I remember sending off my first manuscript uh when I was eight. Um it was a manuscript called He's Gone.

Alexander McCall Smith11:16

and I can't remember where he went.

Presenter11:18

Hawaii.

Alexander McCall Smith11:18

Or who he was, or why he went. Uh it was no doubt just a couple of pages. And I actually sent it off to a publisher somewhere, and I got a very kind letter back, which which which is nice. Had I got um an unkind letter back, a brush off, maybe I wouldn't many years later have written.

Presenter11:36

Record number three.

Alexander McCall Smith11:38

Record number three is a song of Robert Burns, John Anderson, My Joe, and this particular song is a wonderful.

Alexander McCall Smith11:48

a count of friendship, which is a subject uh which interests me.

Alexander McCall Smith11:53

It's a woman uh singing about her husband.

Alexander McCall Smith11:57

and they're towards the end of their lives now, and she remembers him when he was younger, and it's just a marvellous uh song of the friendship that exists between Married persons, but it could refer to friendship between anybody.

Speaker 312:21

But hand in hand will go.

Speaker 312:29

And we'll see the love free.

Presenter12:43

Helen MacArthur singing Robert Burns John Anderson My Joe. So you came to the UK to Edinburgh, Sandy, to study law, and you then got your first job in Belfast. This was early 70s, lecturing at Queen's, the height of the modern troubles, really. You you said it was a very important year for you. Why do you say that?

Alexander McCall Smith13:06

Yes, it was very important for me, and the reason why I say that is that I found myself in the middle of conflict. As you say, that period was a period of great hope because it was the first power-sharing agreement, and also it was a period of great despair in that that collapsed. And so I saw a society which had been through a lot, really, I suppose, a small-scale civil war, really. And you couldn't be indifferent to that.

Presenter13:35

Come on.

Presenter13:36

And and you know, you mentioned um the importance of friendship in your life when you were introducing the the the last piece of music, the the Robert Burns piece. I think that's what it made you think about, and it seems to be a recurring theme in in your life and in the things that you've written about, is the nature of friendship, the nature of forgiveness.

Alexander McCall Smith13:53

Hmm.

Presenter13:54

um our responsibilities towards each other.

Alexander McCall Smith13:57

Yes, I think for for many of us uh friendship is is possibly the most important thing in our in our lives, and we may not necessarily have thought about it a great deal, but friendship poses all sorts of interesting moral problems which are worth thinking about.

Presenter14:13

And it's there, obviously, in in your um writing about Maro Motsui. I mean, i she's a kind of traditional embodiment, as we've said, about all that that's decent and good, perhaps about Southern Africans in general. This is all part of that same theme, isn't it?

Alexander McCall Smith14:29

Yes, I think Maramatsui represents something which I think that many visitors, even just visitors to sub-Saharan African countries, are very struck by, and that's by the kindness of people.

Presenter14:44

and the ability to forgive.

Alexander McCall Smith14:46

And the ability to forgive. In in Africa often you you find that just a a a short encounter with somebody, they'll they'll give you their all and they'll share. This is a ver very interesting thing. People who may not have very much are prepared to share. It's it's it's quite remarkable.

Presenter15:04

For number four.

Alexander McCall Smith15:07

John Ireland's um anthem, uh greater love hath no man, is uh I suppose.

Alexander McCall Smith15:15

something that deals with what we've just been talking about, about love. And there's some wonderful lines in this. Love is as strong as death. Well, some people would say even more powerful than that.

Presenter16:26

John Ireland's Greater Love Hath No Man, with the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral. Andrew Lucas was playing the organ, and the conductor was John Scott. So back in Edinburgh, Sandy, you started to write, and you wrote and you wrote and you wrote. Almost a compulsive behaviour, you're suggesting.

Presenter16:47

Thirty children's books, twenty other books, novels, short stories, academic terms, you just you're just a writer.

Alexander McCall Smith16:55

Well, I suppose so, yes. And I started to write children's books, which was a bit of an accident. I hadn't thought that I would be a writer of children's books, but there was a literary competition in Edinburgh in the late seventies, and I was lucky enough to be one of the winners of the Fiction for Children category. And I then wrote

Presenter17:16

Another 29.

Alexander McCall Smith17:17

Another 29.

Presenter17:18

But I'm interested in your compulsion to write, because it's not just a compulsion, is it? You've described it as almost like going into a trance. It's something that

Alexander McCall Smith17:28

Comes

Presenter17:28

Uh

Alexander McCall Smith17:28

Uh

Presenter17:28

Do you?

Alexander McCall Smith17:29

Yes, that's the way I work. It's an interesting phenomenon. I I think that writing emerges from the subconscious mind.

Presenter17:36

So the narrative is is created without your knowing about it.

Alexander McCall Smith17:41

I think to a great extent it is. Now, obviously, one can sit down and say let's think of a plot. But of course, even if you say let's think of a plot, you're probably then delving into your subconscious to come up with the ideas and the possibilities.

Presenter17:57

Yes, but you're suggesting it's not quite like that, that you sit down and I know that you said you write, you uh you type as fast as you write, it's all there, it's all coming out. So it's already it's prewritten.

Alexander McCall Smith18:05

Yes.

Alexander McCall Smith18:08

It is somewhere.

Presenter18:08

It is somewhere unbeknown to you.

Alexander McCall Smith18:10

It probably is, or it starts to be written when I sit down, but it's written in a place in my mind that I'm not really aware of, uh, because it just comes out. So I just sit there and out it comes.

Presenter18:25

And you don't question that now, it just happens.

Alexander McCall Smith18:27

Well, I don't think one should question it, because I think if you're a writer and you start to ask why you write or how you write, uh you could probably stop writing.

Presenter18:33

Uh

Speaker 318:33

How

Speaker 318:37

Number five.

Alexander McCall Smith18:38

Everybody knows, as time goes by, from Casablanca. I suppose you could say it's sentimental, but why not? And it reminds me of a wonderful experience that I had in that I went to Casablanca, arrived at night, went out, got a taxi, and the taxi drove down the road, and the beam of light swung round and illuminated a sign which said Casablanca. And in the taxi, as I went in, I'm afraid I couldn't help but hum the tune that we're about to hear.

Presenter19:14

Sing itself.

Alexander McCall Smith19:17

You must remember this.

Alexander McCall Smith19:20

A kiss is just a kiss.

Alexander McCall Smith19:23

A sigh is just a sigh.

Alexander McCall Smith19:29

The fair

Presenter19:29

Fundamental things apply as time goes by.

Alexander McCall Smith19:37

Sam, I thought I told you never to play.

Presenter19:39

Humphrey Bogard cutting it off in mid-flow there. As time goes by from the soundtrack of Casablanca made in nineteen forty-two, Dooley Wilson at the piano, encouraged by Ingrid Bergman. I quoted you in the introduction as saying there was a need for literature which affirms.

Presenter19:56

Is that also a a a comment on on on the nature of society, that we are inherently cynical? Is that what you're saying? That we are encouraged in what I think has been called miserablism?

Alexander McCall Smith20:06

Well, I suppose there's always a degree of cynicism about, um but I do think that

Alexander McCall Smith20:11

It's a pity that we are so focussed on what one might call the pathological elements in society, violence and dysfunction of various sorts, that we begin to feel that this is the only way in which to approach life, and I suppose we might become a bit nihilistic as well.

Alexander McCall Smith20:31

Now of course one doesn't want to have a a a straitjacket society or society which is too

Presenter20:35

Precisely. So what do you do about it? I mean you you write your gentle books, which happily are very successful, but what more can we do about it? How can we stop what you describe really as a kind of Loss of moral sense.

Alexander McCall Smith20:49

Well, I think it's it's it's very difficult, because we create a moral climate for ourselves in society. And if we entertain ourselves constantly with images and thoughts of of human cruelty and human suffering and human selfishness, and present these as entertainment,

Alexander McCall Smith21:08

Mr. President, my view is that that rather creates a a climate of that in society, and then we throw up our hands in horror when we see people treating uh the suffering and unhappiness of others as uh lightly. Uh we we destroyed um social niceties, uh we destroyed the the the notion of manners, for example, as being something which enables us to get along together in in a crowded world reasonably happily and with due concern for other people. And I think uh the consequences uh are there to see. And I'm conscious of the fact that people will will jer at that and say, Well, you know, that's all very middle class or whatever uh insult they can they can find for it. But I do think there's a a legitimate role for it.

Speaker 221:29

Manner

Presenter21:57

Got number six.

Alexander McCall Smith21:58

Number six is the Sanctus from Fury's Requiem, which I think is a beautiful piece of music. And it will remind me of the fact that my daughters, Lucy and Emily, sang in a performance of that in the Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh some time ago, and it will remind me of the fact that I've got daughters who can sing.

Speaker 322:44

Please come in.

Presenter23:25

Part of the Sanctus from Foray's Requiem, sung by the Elizabeth Brasseur Choir with the Orchestre de la Societe du Conservatoire, conducted by André Cluitans.

Presenter23:36

Um you also, Sandy, have a strongly developed sense of the absurd. Uh you're a bassoonist, is there no end to this man's talents? Who's founded an orchestra the really terrible orchestra. Is it really terrible?

Alexander McCall Smith23:48

It is. It's a very, very um weak orchestra, I'm sorry to say.

Presenter23:52

But do people pay good money to hear it play so terribly?

Alexander McCall Smith23:55

Well, they pay a small amount of money and indeed it's a very good bargain our concerts because we give our audience several glasses of wine before the concert, which assists them to appreciate our idiosyncratic interpretation of the

Presenter24:07

Yeah.

Presenter24:09

Dull the senses.

Presenter24:12

But you play well enough for your awkward.

Alexander McCall Smith24:13

No, I don't. No, I I I don't play the whole bassoon. I I I I play the the lower lower notes. And when it gets up to the higher notes I I stop.

Presenter24:22

Your writing success has meant that you don't get to play in it very often. You're travelling so much. Have you have you been back to Botswana since you put it on the map? What do they think of you there?

Alexander McCall Smith24:31

I go back to Botswana every year. I try to spend uh a little time there every year, and I'd like to spend more time.

Alexander McCall Smith24:36

And in fact they've been extremely generous about it. They've been very kind about it.

Presenter24:41

But you're not at all condescending. I mean, that was that would have been the difficult line to to hold, wouldn't it?

Alexander McCall Smith24:46

Yes, indeed. I I and I write these in in a spirit of admiration for that society. I admire the country. I think they've done tremendously well. I think they're very fine people. I admire them greatly.

Presenter24:56

You must have done wonders for their tourist trade.

Alexander McCall Smith24:58

Well, apparently, yes, uh they have.

Presenter25:01

So everybody's out there looking for Mara Motsuy and Zebra Drive, will they find her?

Alexander McCall Smith25:05

They they are and there is a house which is said to be Mara Motsby's house there and the poor people who live in it I think are fed up now.

Presenter25:14

But you love it. Um you've written it so wide and free that the spirit could rise and soar and not feel the least constrained. I mean there's part of you that's in love with the place there's part of you that that's just in in love with your roots, with Africa, isn't it?

Alexander McCall Smith25:26

Yes, yes, I think that's right. And and people have said to me that these books are are a very long uh love letter uh to a country, and uh I'd say, well, yes, they probably are, and it's it's a love letter that I'm I'm very proud uh to sign my name to.

Presenter25:45

Number seven.

Alexander McCall Smith25:46

I am a great admirer of the works of the late WH Orden.

Alexander McCall Smith25:51

I know a bit of it off by heart, but it would be useful.

Presenter25:53

You saw him once either.

Alexander McCall Smith25:55

I saw him once, and it was a great experience for me. I was sitting in the front row, and the great poet arrived, a very shambolic sort of figure, with a very crumpled suit, with all sorts of soup stains and cigarette ash down the sleeves, and and what not. And he went on to the stage. He was wearing carpet slippers. He he wore slippers in were everywhere, I I understand. He stood up to read.

Alexander McCall Smith26:21

And there was a gasp from the the audience, because the great poet, unfortunately, had forgotten to do up his flies, and he read in that state, but very quickly nobody noticed.

Presenter26:34

And this poem?

Alexander McCall Smith26:36

This poem is On the Circuit, uh which is a very amusing po poem that he r wrote to describe going round speaking to audiences in the United States. And this resonates with me because I do a lot of this now myself and uh they're very nice, generous audiences, but one flies in and out of places and I was

Presenter26:56

With one's flies down up.

Alexander McCall Smith26:57

Well, that's always in my mind. And I I think that Auden really sums it up in in a very amusing way.

Speaker 227:06

Nor bear with equanimity the radio in students' cars, Moosak at breakfast, or, dear God, girl organists in bars.

Speaker 227:16

Then worst of all the anxious thought

Speaker 227:19

Each time my plane begins to sink And the no smoking sign comes on

Speaker 227:25

What will there be to drink?

Speaker 227:27

Is this a milieu where I must, How grey and greenish, how infra-dig, Snatch from the bottle in my bag, An analeptic swig?

Speaker 227:38

Another morning dawns I see Shining below me on the plain

Speaker 227:43

The roofs of one more audience I shall not see again.

Speaker 227:48

God bless the lot of them, although I shan't remember which was which.

Speaker 227:53

God bless the USA, so large.

Speaker 227:56

So friendly.

Speaker 227:58

And so rich.

Presenter28:00

Brilliant and

Speaker 228:00

Brilliant.

Presenter28:01

WH ORDEN reading his poem On the Circuit. He recorded that in 1969. Uh more recently, uh Sandy, you've created a Scottish female sleuth, a spinster, a woman of a certain age, Isabel Dalhousie, who's interested in guess what, music philosophy and friendship and how to behave morally and decently. Uh she's close to Mara Motswee. It strikes me that they're both very close to you.

Alexander McCall Smith28:25

Well, I I suppose it's true that if I think about what Mara Motsby says on various things, for some extraordinary reason I agree with her a hundred per cent. Uh we haven't diff it. But um

Presenter28:36

But one of your friends has said that you you like to talk about people and personality and things like that you're quote almost like a woman in that way. I mean, d do you plead guilty? You are these women, are you not? They are your alter egos.

Alexander McCall Smith28:50

Well, I suppose if we keep this confidential, yes.

Presenter28:57

So there you are. I mean all of this, this whole experience of becoming a famous writer has robbed you of your anonymity. Is there part of I mean, you have created a monster to that extent, haven't you? Is there you're nodding. Is there part of you that would, well, you know, like to rush away to a desert island, put it all behind you and pretend it never happened?

Alexander McCall Smith29:16

Yes, I suppose so. But I must say that I've got great pleasure and great delight from the fact that the books are being read by so many millions of people. That's a wonderful thing, and that is something which I think I would say outweighs any of the negative side of things. Obviously, one loses one's privacy and one loses control over one's time. But I think it's outweighed by the fact that there are those people there who are waiting to hear from Mara Mansui, waiting to hear the news from the number one ladies detective agency. And I love being involved in that. That's a great, great privilege. I count myself a very, very fortunate man.

Alexander McCall Smith30:00

Last record.

Alexander McCall Smith30:02

Planksty.

Alexander McCall Smith30:04

Irish musicians singing uh and playing a lovely, I think rather haunting piece of music called The West Coast of Clare. I think this is a this is a a beautiful, rather wistful piece of music. It um it brings tears to the eyes and I think if music can do that then uh it's worth listening to.

Presenter30:25

Uh Our own sand.

Speaker 230:30

Better nice green.

Speaker 230:36

Man

Speaker 330:36

Only if I have of you

Speaker 330:41

Won't leave.

Alexander McCall Smith30:43

Me and

Alexander McCall Smith30:47

My mind was running.

Presenter30:51

To the west coast. Thanks, D. And the west coast of Clare. Now, Sandy, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take?

Alexander McCall Smith31:02

I think I would probably take the Mozart, because I can listen to that again and again, and indeed I do. I often write to that.

Alexander McCall Smith31:11

I have so arranged it on my computer that it plays over and over again.

Alexander McCall Smith31:15

So I think I'd probably be able to listen to it many times on the Desert Island.

Presenter31:19

And what about your book? You as you know, we give you the Bible and we give you the complete works of Shakespeare.

Alexander McCall Smith31:24

Well, I think there's no question but that I would take the um collector shorter poems of of WH Orden.

Alexander McCall Smith31:31

or any collection of substantial collection of Orton's works, I would take that.

Alexander McCall Smith31:37

And your luxury.

Alexander McCall Smith31:39

I think that I would rather like to have a good pair of shoes made for me by one of these London shoemakers. So I'd mentioned to them that I was going to Des T Island, and perhaps we should have a particular sort of soul. But these people are so discreet and experienced that they would say, Well, we've done this before, sir.

Alexander McCall Smith31:58

Uh

Presenter31:59

But where are you going to walk to? Round in circles, huh?

Alexander McCall Smith32:02

Well, I don't know.

Alexander McCall Smith32:04

I might just stand, but I'd stand very comfortably.

Presenter32:08

Alexander McCall Smith, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Alexander McCall Smith32:12

Thank you.

Speaker 332:21

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