Alexander McCall Smith grounded

A strange week with many travel plans disrupted including those for publishers heading to the London Book Fair. Colleagues report a much quieter fair than anticipated and now they have the struggle of getting home to Scotland.
Volcanic ash has brought preparations for Alexander McCall Smith’s planned speaking tour in the USA to a shuddering halt. Sadly, the decision had to be taken to abandon what would have been a sell-out tour taking in New York, Cincinnati, Greenville, Washington DC, Raleigh, Minneapolis, Houston,  South Hadley, and Boston before travelling on to Toronto in Canada. Alexander now plans to use the time to do transcontinental interviews by phone and on the internet and to concentrate on his writing. He is hoping that his American reader’s will understand that the situation is out of his hands. He was looking forward to his conversations with them but both sides will have to wait a little longer.

Animated Corduroy

I wonder how many folk have seen the animated sequence on our website, promoting the two books from the author Alexander McCall Smith? The first was 'Corduroy Mansions', and the second, due to launch shortly, is 'The Dog Who Came In From The Cold' which follows on. Click the Flying Battery on the right to view!

After the huge success of the 44 Scotland Street series, Alexander McCall Smith ‘moved house’ to a crumbling four-storey mansion in Pimlico – Corduroy Mansions. It is inhabited by a glorious assortment of characters: among them, Oedipus Snark, the first ever nasty Lib Dem MP, who is so detestable his own mother, Berthea, is writing an unauthorised biography about him; and one small vegetarian dog, Freddie de la Hay, who has the ability to fasten his own seatbelt. (Although Corduroy Mansions is a fictional name, the address is now registered by the Post Office.)

We would love to have some feedback from you about the animation and hear what you think of the site overall -

www.birlinn.co.uk