Sir Alexander McCall Smith speaking at the St Andrew's Book Festival 2024

Transcript

00:00Good morning, we're here at the St. Andrew's Book Festival, actually on St. Andrew's Day

00:05and who better to celebrate it with than Sir Alexander McCall-Smith.

00:10Sandy, what do you think, first thoughts coming to the first book festival, the first St. Andrew's

00:16Book Festival, thoughts please. Well I think it's a wonderful idea, it's tremendous for

00:23Scottish writers and Scottish publishers as well to, I suppose, be able to address audiences in

00:31London directly as a Scottish group. Edinburgh used to be, as you well know, a tremendous

00:37publishing centre, it's always punched above its weight in literary terms and I think this is just

00:44a marvellous way of connecting with people in London. Now St. Andrew's Day itself, I was at

00:51an event earlier this week and Angus Robertson, who as well as being the Minister for External

01:00Affairs is the Minister for the Diaspora, so St. Andrew's Day is a big day for him and he said

01:05he'd like to take a leaf out of the Irish playbook and make St. Andrew's Day as big a day

01:12as St. Patrick's Day. Now what could we do to make that happen? I think that would be very difficult,

01:20I think St. Patrick's Day is a very hard act to follow, in fact I don't think that would work,

01:25I mean all power to his elbow in trying to make it work but let's be realistic about it.

01:32There have been attempts to try and do that in New York in the past but I think St. Patrick's Day,

01:38we just have to accept that St. Patrick's Day has got the lead, they've got green Guinness

01:44and they paint themselves green. Now I suppose Scots could, well Scots could paint themselves

01:49blue, many of them do, but somehow I think we have to concede that they do it rather well.

01:57You see I was thinking even this festival yesterday we saw the Hebridean baker,

02:02a very fine man, and I thought he could get the national dish and I was thinking

02:07I could ask my friend Sandy McCall-Smith to write the national poem for St. Andrew's Day

02:11and who knows what we could start. I'd be very happy to do that, I'd do anything that I can

02:17to support it but I think it's going to be a bit of a battle. I think in fact they're making some

02:23impact, I think there's always been goodwill towards Scotland and St. Andrew's so I think

02:29we could probably do a bit more and I'm glad that he's wanting to do that.

02:35We'll look forward to your event later today, thank you very much Sandy.

02:38Thank you David.