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Portrait image of Alexander McCall Smith Photo: Ola Erikson / Forflex 82010)

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McCall Smith, Alexander

The British author Alexander McCall Smith – called Sandy by family and friends – was born in Bulawayo in the then British colony of Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) as the youngest of four children to a British public prosecutor and his wife. He was schooled at the Christian Brothers College in Bulawayo before travelling to Scotland in 1966 to start studying Law at the University of Edi...

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Literary figures

Boysie (Brian) Oakes

Gender: Male

He is recruited as a spy by mistake, and is regarded as tough, ruthless and bloodthirsty. In actual fact, he is an easy-going, forgetful and cowardly mummy’s boy, who hires gangsters to carry out the acts of violence he is ordered to do. This doesn’t prevent Brian ‘Boysie’ Oakes from making a career. It is simplest to describe him as a parody of James Bond, and John Gardner has written a suite of...

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