Sandy's Education:
Early Years
Sandy attended the Christian Brothers College in Bulawayo (which appears to also be known as St Patrick's CBC), even though his family is (was) Presbyterian (just in case you don't know, or even don't care, CBC schools are Roman Catholic).
One source says he completed school and enrolled at University when he was 17. However, his age is given as 19 in other sources, which seems to better fit the timeframes involved. Whatever, he left home and travelled to Scotland's capital, Edinburgh, to attend Edinburgh University. We're not sure if this was his father's university, but it was definitely his grandfather's. |
George McCall Smith
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Mind you, today is still pretty sexist, so perhaps he would just get suspended for a few months. Or maybe he and his mates would just laugh about it over a beer. But we hope those days are well past.
Mind you, the outflow of vituperative and personally directed humbuggery at Australia's first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, a few years ago made us greatly reappraise our beliefs in the extent of change. George has been described as a courageous, tempestuous, extraordinary man, a man of striking physical size and appearance, with long hair and informal dress. He was very well read, with a strong interest in literature and philosophy. According to one friend, George was a cross between an Arab chieftain and an Archbishop. And, oh, yes, he published several successful books on his experiences. George and his first wife finally divorced in 1921, some ten years after he took off, and he married the woman he had run away with. They had a son, who died young, and a daughter - Sandy's extra siblings. |
Sandy's PhD
Rightyo, back to Sandy. He studied for a law degree, like his father. But Sandy didn't stop there. He did very well in his degree, obtaining first class honours in 1971. By 1973 he had his PhD, becoming qualified to call himself Dr. McCall Smith.
We presume he did quite well in his PhD. In Australia, the usual process is (or maybe "was", we're a little out-of-date!), roughly, honours degree (4 years), Masters (2 years), then PhD (3 years). We don't know what the normal process was in Scotland in those days, but if it was similar to Australia then Sandy appears to not only have dodged the two years of a Masters, but also one year of his PhD. Mind you, with what we know about Sandy, this would be absolutely no surprise. But, of course, it's quite possible the process was different. We guess there must be records somewhere of his thesis, but we haven't found them (yet), |
even on Edinburgh University's online archive (at the time of writing, 2015).
The only comment we've been able to find from Sandy is the description of his thesis as a combined criminal law/philosophy of action thesis (whatever that means - or are we displaying our ignorance and it's obvious to all of you? Whoops). Oh, and Sandy studied under a bloke who was a world expert in the extraordinary complexities of the law of Republican Rome. That does not, of course, mean Sandy's thesis had anything to do with Republican Rome. Mind you, Republican Rome did involve a heck of a lot of crime, albeit perhaps not as much as was committed on behalf of, by, and sometimes against the succeeding emperors. Oh, and there was also a heap of action, and an awful lot of philosophical hypocrisy. In 1973, right after completing his doctorate, Sandy seems to have quite quickly secured a job in academia as, we understand, a junior law lecturer, at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, implying the quality of his thesis, whatever the heck it was about. |
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