With his characteristic warmth, inventiveness and brilliant wit, Alexander McCall Smith gives us more of the gloriously entertaining comings and goings at 44 Scotland Street, the Edinburgh townhouse.
The story revolves around the comings and goings at No. 44 Scotland Street, a fictitious building in a real street in Edinburgh. Immediately recognisable are the Edinburgh chartered surveyor, stalwart of the Conservative Association, who dreams of membership of Scotland’s most exclusive golf club. We have the pushy Stockbridge mother, and her prodigiously talented five-year-old son, who is making good progress with the saxophone and with his Italian. Then there is Domenica Macdonald who is that type of Edinburgh lady who sees herself as a citizen of a broader intellectual world.
In Espresso Tales, Alexander McCall Smith returns home to Edinburgh and the glorious cast of his own tales of the city, the residents of 44 Scotland Street, with a new set of challenges for each one of them.
Giants, dwarfs, monsters, and magicians star in 42 classic stories from China, Russia, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Scotland, and England. Includes "The Three Little Pigs" and "The Half-Chick."
The dialect of North-East Scotland, one of the most distinctive and best preserved in the country, survives as both a proudly maintained mark of local identity and the vehicle for a remarkable regional literature. The present study, after placing the dialect in its historical, geographical and social context, discusses in some detail a selection of previous accounts of its distinctive characteristics of phonology and grammar, showing that its shibboleths have been well recognised, and have remained consistent, over a long period. Passages of recorded speech are then examined, with extensive use of phonetic transcription.
