Alexander McCall Smith was born in Bulawayo, in what was then Southern Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe. His father worked as a public prosecutor in what was then a British colony. He was educated at the Christian Brothers College before moving to Scotland to study law at the University of Edinburgh, where he received his Ph.D. in law.

He soon taught at Queen's University Belfast, and while teaching there he entered a literary competition: one a children's book and the other a novel for adults. He won in the children's category, and published thirty books in the 1980s and 1990s.

He returned to southern Africa in 1981 to help co-found and teach law at the University of Botswana. While there, he cowrote what remains the only book on the country's legal system, The Criminal Law of Botswana (1992).

He returned in 1984 to Edinburgh, Scotland, where he lives today with his wife, Elizabeth, a physician, and their two daughters Lucy and Emily. He was Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh at one time and is now Emeritus Professor at its School of Law. He retains a further involvement with the University in relation to the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

He is the former chairman of the British Medical Journal Ethics Committee (until 2002), the former vice-chairman of the Human Genetics Commission of the United Kingdom, and a former member of the International Bioethics Commission of UNESCO. After achieving success as a writer, he gave up these commitments.

He was appointed a CBE in the December 2006 New Year's Honours List for services to literature. In June 2007, he was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws at a ceremony celebrating the tercentenary of the University of Edinburgh School of Law.

He is an amateur bassoonist, and co-founder of The Really Terrible Orchestra. He has helped to found Botswana's first centre for opera training, the Number 1 Ladies' Opera House, for whom he wrote the libretto of their first production, a version of Macbeth set among a troop of baboons in the Okavango Delta. He is also the author of a testimonial in The Future of the NHS (2006). His use of the serial format, in his Edinburgh and Pimlico novels, has revived the 19th-century format used by authors including Charles Dickens and Armistead Maupin.

In 2009, he donated the short story Still Life to Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales' project - four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. McCall Smith's story was published in the 'Air' collection.

Former American First Lady Laura Bush is a big fan of Smith's, as is Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series

• 1998 The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency
• 2000 Tears of the Giraffe
• 2001 Morality for Beautiful Girls
• 2002 The Kalahari Typing School for Men
• 2003 The Full Cupboard of Life
• 2004 In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (also known as The Night-Time Dancer.)
• 2006 Blue Shoes and Happiness
• 2007 The Good Husband of Zebra Drive
• 2008 The Miracle at Speedy Motors
• 2009 Tea Time for the Traditionally Built
• 2010 The Double Comfort Safari Club
• 2010 Precious and the Puggies (novella for younger readers, first published in a Scots translation by James Robertson.)
• 2011 Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party

The 2½ Pillars of Wisdom

• 2003 Portuguese Irregular Verbs
• 2003 The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs
• 2003 At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances

The Sunday Philosophy Club Series

also known as Isabel Dalhousie Mysteries

• 2004 The Sunday Philosophy Club
• 2005 Friends, Lovers, Chocolate
• 2006 The Right Attitude to Rain
• 2007 The Careful Use of Compliments
• 2008 The Comfort of Saturdays (UK title) or The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday (American title)
• 2009: The Lost Art of Gratitude
• 2010: The Charming Quirks of Others

44 Scotland Street Series

• 2005 44 Scotland Street
• 2005 Espresso Tales
• 2006 Love over Scotland
• 2007 The World According to Bertie
• 2008 The Unbearable Lightness of Scones
• 2010 The Importance of Being Seven

Corduroy Mansions

• 2009 Corduroy Mansions
• 2009 The Dog Who Came in from the Cold (published online daily in serial form at [1]; also published as a hard cover book on 1 May 2010).

Other novels

• 2008 La's Orchestra Saves the World

Short story collections

• 1991 Children of Wax: African Folk Tales
• 1995 Heavenly Date: And Other Flirtations
• 2004 The Girl Who Married a Lion: And Other Tales from Africa

Children's books

• 1980 The White Hippo
• 1984 The Perfect Hamburger
• 1988 Alix and the Tigers
• 1990 The Tin Dog
• 1991 Calculator Annie
• 1991 The Popcorn Pirates
• 1992 Akimbo and the Lions
• 1992 The Doughnut Ring
• 1993 Akimbo and the Crocodile Man
• 1994 Paddy and the Ratcatcher
• 1995 The Muscle Machine
• 1996 The Bubblegum Tree
• 1997 Bursting Balloons Mystery
• 1997 The Five Lost Aunts of Harriet Bean
• 1999 Chocolate Money Mystery
• 2000 Teacher Trouble
• 2005 Akimbo and the Elephants
• 2006 Dream Angus
• 2006 Akimbo and the Snakes
• 2008 Akimbo and the Baboons

Academic texts

• 1978 Power and Manoeuvrability (with Tony Carty)
• 1983 Law and Medical Ethics (with J Kenyon Mason) (this text has gone through several editions: a seventh, by Mason and Graeme Laurie, was published in 2006. McCall Smith contributed to all six previous editions.)
• 1987 Butterworths Medico-Legal Encyclopaedia (with J Kenyon Mason)
• 1990 Family Rights: Family Law and Medical Advances (with Elaine Sutherland)
• 1992 The Criminal Law of Botswana (with Kwame Frimpong)
• 1993 The Duty to Rescue (with Michael Menlowe, 1993)
• 1992 Scots Criminal Law (with David H Sheldon, second edition published 1997)
• 1997 Forensic Aspects of Sleep (with Colin Shapiro)
• 2000 Justice and the Prosecution of Old Crimes (with Daniel W Shuman)
• 2001 Errors, Medicine and the Law (with Alan Merry)
• 2003 A Draft Criminal Code for Scotland (with Eric Clive, Pamela Ferguson and Christopher Gane)
• 2004 Creating Humans: Ethical questions where reproduction and science collide (collected lectures, audio recordings)