Scottish musician, author, actor, lecturer and bookseller Derek Watson, who "straddled these different worlds with an infectious charm and wicked sense of fun as he reveled in seemingly contrary passions," died September 17, the Herald reported. He was 69. Watson wrote several biographies of classical music composers and owned a bookshop in West Linton "where he lived for more than 20 years, with both he and the shop immortalized in a novel by Alexander McCall Smith."
As an author, Watson contributed several volumes to the Master Musicians book series, including works on Bruckner (1975) and Liszt (1989). He also wrote a major biography of Wagner (1979) and edited the Dictionary of Music Quotations (1991).
After he retired from the theater in 1994, Watson opened Linton Books and "the shop provided him with an alternative stage, 'playing' the proprietor of the shop to entertain customers," the Herald noted.
Friends, Lovers, Chocolate, McCall Smith's second novel in the Sunday Philosophy Club series, "found the book's heroine Isabel Dalhousie visiting Derek in his capacity as bookseller. The shop itself featured during the unraveling of the story's mystery."