Alexander McCall Smith

Rodney Alexander Alasdair McCall Smith was born in 1948 in Bulawayo in the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe), to British parents. His father worked as a public prosecutor in Bulawayo. McCall Smith was educated at the Christian Brothers College in Bulawayo before moving to Scotland at age 17 to study law at the University of Edinburgh, where he earned his LLB and PhD degrees. He soon taught at Queen's University Belfast, and while teaching there he entered a literary competition: one a children's book and the other a novel for adults. He won in the children's category. ==Professional career==

in 2019 McCall Smith returned to southern Africa in 1981 to help co-found the law school and teach law at the University of Botswana. He was Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh and is now Emeritus Professor at its School of Law. He retains a further involvement with the university in relation to the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. McCall Smith is the former chairman of the Ethics Committee of the British Medical Journal (until 2002), the former vice-chairman of the Human Genetics Commission of the United Kingdom, and a former member of the International Bioethics Committee of UNESCO. He gave up those commitments after achieving success as a writer. ==Honours==

McCall Smith was appointed a CBE in the 2007 New Year Honours List issued at the end of December 2006 for services to literature. In the 2024 New Year Honours he was appointed Knight Bachelor for services to Literature, to Academia and to Charity. In June 2007, he was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws at a ceremony celebrating the tercentenary of the University of Edinburgh School of Law. In June 2015 he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters at a graduation ceremony at the University of St Andrews. ==Personal life==

He settled in Edinburgh, Scotland, after studying there. He and his wife Elizabeth, a physician, bought and renovated a large Victorian mansion in the Merchiston area of the city. They have lived there since, raising their two daughters. An amateur bassoonist, he co-founded The Really Terrible Orchestra. He has helped to found Botswana's first centre for opera training, the Number 1 Ladies' Opera House, for whom he wrote the libretto of their first production, a version of Macbeth set among a troop of baboons in the Okavango Delta. In 2009 he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member Archbishop Desmond Tutu at an awards ceremony at St. George's Cathedral in Cape Town, South Africa. In 2012 he appeared in a documentary about the life and work of author W. Somerset Maugham, Revealing Mr. Maugham. In 2014 McCall Smith purchased the Cairns of Coll, a chain of uninhabited islets in the Hebrides. He said, "I intend to do absolutely nothing with them, and to ensure that, after I am gone, they are held in trust, unspoilt and uninhabited, for the nation. I want them kept in perpetuity as a sanctuary for wildlife – for birds and seals and all the other creatures to which they are home." During a visit to New Zealand in 2014 McCall Smith visited Rawene, where his grandfather, George McCall Smith, ran the hospital for 34 years and created the Hokianga area health service. ==Writing career==

McCall Smith is a prolific author of fiction, with several series to his credit. He writes at a prodigious rate: "Even when travelling, he never loses a day, turning out between 2,000 and 3,000 words [a day] – but more like 5,000 words when at home in Edinburgh. His usual rate is 1,000 words an hour". He published 30 books in the 1980s and 1990s before he began the series that has brought him the world's notice. In 2020 he published a collection of poetry entitled In a Time of Distance: And Other Poems. ==Bibliography==