Alexander Smith

Alexander McCall Smith’s diary: Meeting Babar’s creator

Plus: The other referendum Scotland needs, a revolution in life jackets, suggested topics for David Cameron

Babar creator Laurent de Brunhoff Photo: Nathan Denette/AP/PA 
issue 08 February 2014

As any author will tell you, literary festivals differ widely. If you are invited to Willy Dalrymple’s Jaipur Festival, with its renowned final party, you say yes within minutes of receiving the invitation. Other invitations you might take a little longer to accept.

The Key West Literary Seminar, which took place a couple of weeks ago, is one of the glamorous ones. I was ready for Florida, as Scotland had been visited by gale after gale and accompanying driving rain. As luck would have it, we arrived in Key West at exactly the same time as the polar vortex that had frozen the entire United States, including a normally balmy Florida. No matter: Key West was, for the duration, one huge literary celebration.

I was invited to lunch at a house in the old part of the town.

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