Last Sunday 12 March, I had the pleasure of interviewing Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith at Brisbane Powerhouse Theatre.
When the event was first booked, McCall Smith had recently published the latest book in his No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, A Song of Comfortable Chairs. But between then and last Sunday, more titles had appeared: The Private Life of Spies and The Exquisite Art of Getting Even, stand-alone works containing short stories joined by theme.
As a result, our conversation traversed three books and quite a varied range of topics, from the nature of revenge and forgiveness to the human scale of his delightful stories about Mma Precious Ramotswe and about the somewhat unlikely cast he has chosen for his book about spies, which includes German soldiers parachuted into England dressed as nuns, disgruntled Scottish farmers, and theologians seeking to safeguard the values of another age.
Perhaps more notable than even McCall Smith's productivity (he has published some 100 titles) is the consistency of his kindly tone and good humour in his books, and this came through on stage, as well. I didn't ask all that many questions, for his answers were generous and often very funny, digressive in a very enjoyable way, and he was keen to ask questions of me in reply: he sought out conversation, much as the characters in his books seem to do.
