Alexander McCall Smith returns to 44 Scotland Street, and its glorious cast of residents, all with new challenges to confront.

Bruce is about to embark on a new career as a wine merchant, while his long-suffering flatmate Pat finds herself invited to a nudist picnic. And prodigious six-year-old Bertie, who wants a boy’s life of fishing and rugby, not yoga and pink dungarees, plots rebellion against his bossy mother and his psychotherapist, Dr Fairbairn. But when Bertie’s longed-for trip to Glasgow with his ineffectual father goes comically awry, it seems that Bertie should be careful what he wishes for.