Book review.

If you agree that every good photograph tells a story, then I have a book for you – only, however, if you find Alexander McCall Smith’s tales “charming”, not if they strike you as “corny”. The author took five vintage photographs, snapshots really, of ordinary people doing ordinary things, taken from early- to mid-twentieth century, and wrote a short story for each. If you are familiar with his work (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and others) you know that pretty much everyone lives happily-ever-after, or at least learns a valuable lesson. The photos were all from an age when a photograph was not a photograph unless it was a print, which begs the question of whether a hundred years from now our only-on-a-screen photos will inspire similar stories. I give this book four f-stops (out of five).