Isabel Dalhousie, the eponymous heroine of the best-selling series of books by Sir Alexander McCall Smith and regular (fictional) visitor to IASH, may soon be making her way to the screen. Variety reports that the series has been optioned by Synchronicity Films, with Andrea Gibb expected to adapt the novels for television. Gibb's recent work includes Miss Austen for the BBC.
Set to be a returnable crime series, “Dalhousie” will follow the wilfully determined and stubbornly independent lead character, neither a detective nor a police officer, but rather a philosopher and the editor of the Journal of Applied Ethics.
Sir Sandy said, “I am delighted that Synchronicity is keen to translate the Isabel Dalhousie books to the screen. Isabel enjoys a very wide following in many parts of the world, and the idea of a highly-regarded Scottish film company engaging with her story is very attractive to me.”
Several of the series include scenes at the Institute, beginning with the eighth book, The Forgotten Affairs of Youth (2011); in 2020's The Geometry of Holding Hands, for example, Isabel visits IASH for the Fellows' lunch and work-in-progress seminar:
Every Tuesday, the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities had its fellows' lunch. This was something of a picnic, to which people brought fruit and sandwiches which they ate while listening to a work-in-progress paper by a visiting scholar. Isabel was an anonymous supporter of the institute, signing a generous cheque twice a year to support its activities, and in return was invited to its functions. She was an occasional participant in the Tuesday lunch, choosing to listen to various obscure and recondite papers on subjects she might otherwise never have explored. In recent months she had enjoyed listening to a visiting Italian professor on the roots of commedia dell'arte, an English social historian on self-help societies in nineteenth-century pottery towns, and, inadvertently, Professor Robert Lettuce on the ethics of memory.
The Isabel Dalhousie Fellowship at IASH was generously created by Sir Alexander McCall Smith in 2012, in honour of his heroine. The first Isabel Dalhousie Fellow was Professor Edward Mendelson. In 2013, the Fellowship was held by Michael and Edna Longley. In 2014, we welcomed Professors Edward and Cheryl Mendelson back to IASH as joint holders of the Isabel Dalhousie Fellowship. The 2016 Fellow was Professor Juliette Wells, Associate Professor and Chair of English at Goucher College, Baltimore, Maryland. The 2019 Fellow was Professor George van Driem, Chair for Historical Linguistics at the University of Berne, where he directs the Linguistics Institute.
Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study featured prominently in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, including scenes of Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer debating by the duckpond. Perhaps IASH may yet appear on screen?