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Worldwide best selling author of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, Alexander McCall Smith presents an antidote to the stresses of everyday life. Join him and escape into a world of stories, wit, and uplifting good humour – a truly positive distraction.

‘You can, in the space of relatively few pages, create a whole world. You can tell the story of a life in a page or two. You can cover a whole sweep of history in a couple of paragraphs. Reading a short story is like looking through a tiny chink in a door or between curtains into a wide room beyond.’

Watch or listen to Positive Distraction with Alexander McCall Smith every Wednesday:

YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon

Episode 1 – Helicopters Welcome Here

Episode 2 – Show and Tell

Episode 3 – Logs for Sale

Episode 4 – Sleaze

Episode 5 – My Italian Bulldozer

Episode 6 – To be announced

Episode 7 – To be announced

Episode 8 – To be announced

Alexander McCall Smith, worldwide best-selling author of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and The 44 Scotland Street novels, presents a season of beautifully written short stories. Distract yourself with the warmth of his voice and the infectious ripple of his laughter as he reads short stories written for you, from the heart. A truly positive distraction and an antidote to the stresses of everyday life.

‘There is a common note to all these stories. These are stories that I hope will help the listener to feel a bit better about the world. We may live in difficult times, but there is still friendship, there is still love, there is still human kindness. Sometimes we miss things when they are right before us, and then suddenly they reveal themselves, and touch us. The series is called Positive Distraction. I hope the stories do what the title claims.’