A delightful compendium of short stories inspired by images in the renowned photographic archive of The Sunday Times. A picture can paint a thousand words, but what about a vintage photograph? In 2015 Alexander McCall Smith wrote a book entitled Chance Developments: Unexpected Love Stories, in which he imagined the stories behind five chanced-upon black and white photographs. Who were those people, why were they smiling, what made them sad? He so enjoyed the experience that when The Sunday Times generously offered him access to their early 20th century photograph archive he jumped at the opportunity.