The Blog

Fandom is a strange yet wonderful phenomenon.  Some professed “fans” of Agatha Christie are content to read the occasional Christie novel once in a while, when they have the time.  Other fans feel compelled to read every book that Christie ever wrote.  Still other fans seek out every movie and television adaptation of Christie novels ever filmed.  Some fans with the time and money to travel actually visits locations from Christie’s life and novels.  Then, there are fans like me, who want to help preserve, perpetuate, and polish Christie’s legacy.

Ever since the first film adaptations of Christie ...

The movie, stage, and television adaptations of Christie’s work are well known and often discussed amongst Christie fans.  A fourth medium, radio, is much more obscure and often ignored.  Two of the major overviews of Christie’s work and adaptations of it, Dick Riley and Pam McAllister’s The New Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Agatha Christie, and Dennis Sanders and Len Lovallo’s The Agatha Christie Companion, discuss the movies, plays, and television adaptations, but both ignore the radio dramas.

This is a terrible shame, because some of the best and most interesting adaptations– as well as some ...

One of the many interesting features of Agatha Christie’s work is her recurring focus on the dynamic that exists between strong forceful characters and subdued introverted ones. Throughout her work, these two character types are brought together in many different guises and through a wide variety of circumstances. From the sadistic bully that is Mrs Boynton, who exerts total control over her traumatised family in Appointment With Death, published in 1938, to the self-righteous Mrs. Price-Ridley who holds sway over the subordinate Miss Hartnell and Miss Wetherby over tea and gossip in St Mary Mead ( The Murder at the ...

  • Posted 5 February 2009 at 7:49a.m. GMT
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