20 Agatha also used her beloved Tennyson for the titles of The Hollow and The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side; in A Pocket Full of Rye the children of the family are called Lancelot, Percival and Elaine
21 ‘Dorcas’ became Brenda; ‘Emma’ became Josephine
22 It was on a Nile cruise in 1933, with Max and Rosalind, that Agatha saw a family resembling the Boyntons in Appointment with Death
23 The point was made by Bevis Hillier in his 1999 Spectator review of Charles Osborne’s The Life and Crimes of Ajyatha Christie
24 Sayers wrote a religious play, The Man Born to Be Kinß, and had almost completed her majestic translation of The Divine Comedy when she died in 1957
25 First published in Tribune in 1946
26 In Famous Trials I (Penguin, 1941)
27 In ‘The Lernean Hydra’
28 Letter from AC to Edmund Cork, 31/12/1966
29 According to an essay entitled ‘Dame Agatha’s Poisonous Pharmacopoeia’, written by two doctors, John and Peter Gwilt, and – on the whole – praising her understanding of toxicology
30 ‘Surely it is unnecessarily cruel to set forth Miss Tierney’s problems and sorrows in such a manner’, an American woman wrote in 1964, referring to the fact that the actress Gene Tierney had had a child affected by rubella. Cork replied that Agatha had not known about this
31 In conversation with the author, 2005
32 But Alan Coren, writing in Punch, saw the inherent absurdity: ‘Next week,’ he wrote, ‘the Non-Gentile of Malta’
33 In a letter to George Harmon Coke, 27/6/1940. Julian Symons has similarly made reference to the frequent ‘deplorably loose ends’ in Christie, and one of the worst examples appears in And Then There Were None. After the discovery of Judge Wargrave’s ‘dead body’, the reader is presumably supposed to believe that any of the four people left on the island – Vera Claythorne, Dr Armstrong, Lombard and Blore – might be guilty. In fact circumstances have clearly exonerated Vera: she could not have been killing the judge if at the moment of the murder she was screaming in her bedroom
34 Chabrol would have made a fascinating job of Towards Zero: his magnificent Le Boucher has a serial killer as its central character and La Cérémonie is an adaptation of Ruth Rendell’s A Judgement in Stone
35 AC to Rosalind, no date
36 In conversation with the author
37 Quoted respectively from Dead Man’s Folly, Appointment with Death, The Labours of Hercules, Murder is Easy, Five Little Pigs, The Thirteen Problems, Endless Night, A Pocket Full of Rye, And Then There Were None and Death on the Nile
38 This point was made by Janet Morgan in her biography
39 John Sparrow to AC, 12/1/1969
40 Sidney Smith to AC, 3/6/1943
41 The contemporary French intellectual, Michel Houellebecq, is also a fan: his book Platform contains an adulatory passage about The Hollow. Agatha Christie, he wrote, understood ‘the sin of despair’
42 Robert Speaight to AC, 21/9/1970
43 Broadcast in the ITV Poirot series in 2003
44 Geraldine McEwan plays the part in the ITV series Marple, first broadcast in 2005
45 This marvellous series was broadcast by the BBC between 1984 and 1992
The Late Years
1 John Mallowan, in conversation with the author, 2006
2 From The Burden
3 Ibid
4 Letter from Archie Christie to Rosalind, 24/10/1958
5 In conversation with the author
6 Agatha dedicated one book to Max, early in their marriage: Murder on the Orient Express, part of whose inspiration had come from a calamitous journey taken in 1931 from Nineveh to London. In Stamboul she had boarded the Orient Express, which was interminably delayed; an American lady (who evolved into the book’s Mrs Hubbard) lamented how ‘in the States they’d have motored some automobiles along right away – why, they’d have brought aeroplanes . . .’
7 Letter from MM to Edmund Cork, 24/4/60
8 Letter from Ivan von Auw at the Harold Ober agency to Cork, 9/4/1965
9 On In Town Tonight, a brief interview broadcast on the BBC Home Service, 12/5/1951
10 MM to AC, 11/4/1943
11 MM to AC, 21/5/1944
12 As described by his friend Glyn Daniel, In his autobiography Daniel also described being offered a job by Allen Lane, that of ‘archaeological adviser’ at Penguin; according to Daniel the job had been Max Mallowan’s, but he was sacked as he ‘would only plan books on Near Eastern archaeology . . . my dealings with Max were a little strained for several years’
13 In conversation with the author, 2006
14 Cork to Ober, 6/2/1953
15 Cork to AC, 5/8/1953
16 Agatha speaking on In Town Tonight
17 In ‘Agatha Christie, Nimrud and Baghdad’, from Agatha Christie and Archaeology, a collection of essays edited by Charlotte Triimpler, published by British Museum Press to coincide with its 2001 exhibition
18 Letter from AC to Rosalind, 1957
19 Joan Oates, in conversation with the author
20 Joan Oates, in conversation with the author
21 AC to Rosalind, sent from the Zia Hotel, date incomplete
22 This play was written for Margaret Lockwood, whose agent had approached Agatha via Peter Saunders; in a charming gesture Agatha included a part for Lockwood’s 14 year old daughter Julia. The play – a lightweight thing but not without wit; almost a screwball comedy – was filmed in 1960
23 AC to Rosalind, sent from the British School of Archaeology, date incomplete
24 AC to Rosalind, sent from the BSA, date incomplete
25 From Appointment with Death
26 Rosalind to AC, sent from Pwllywrach, date incomplete
27 Cork to Rosalind, 6/5/1952
28 AC to Rosalind, 3/4/1952
29 Cork to AC, 22/5/1952
30 Agatha loved horse racing, as did Max, and in later life her dislike of television was tempered by the fact that she could watch the racing on it. Her letters to Anthony Hicks, also a racing fan, are full of references to bets that had gone down – ‘yes a bad blow on the horses’ – although she did have the odd success (a letter from Edmund Cork congratulated her on backing My Love to win the 1948 Derby; he had placed the bet for her). She was also prevailed upon to present the ‘Mousetrap Trophy’ at Exeter races. Her books contain the occasional, wondrously normal reference to racing, which in the midtwentieth century was very much a part of English daily life. In The ABC Murders the fourth murder is scheduled to take place at Doncaster on a certain Wednesday in September; the unworldly policeman in charge thinks that forewarned is forearmed and the killer will be picked up. ‘Man alive’, he is told, ‘don’t you realise that on next Wednesday the St Leger is being run at Doncaster)' In 4.50 from Paddington an alibi is broken by a taxi driver, who ‘identified the day because a horse called Crawler had won the 2.30 and he’d had a tidy bit on’. ‘Thank God for racing!’ says the policeman in charge
31 This story later became Dead Man’s Folly, but for some reason in its original form it did not sell. ‘The Bishop of Exeter’s lawyers are being horrid about “Greenshaw’s Folly”’, wrote Cork to Obers in 1956. ‘They say they find it difficult to believe that Mrs Mallowan would have presented the church with a story that would not sell!’ The irony was that when the story was lengthened into Dead Man’s Folly it was willingly bought: then cut.
32 AC to Cork, 19/2/1956
33 AC to Cork, no date
34 Cork to AC, 10/2/1956
35 AC to Cork, 19/2/1956
36 AC to the Hickses, 20/2/1956
37 Cork to AC, 10/3/1956
38 AC to Cork, 17/3/1956
39 In conversation with the author, 2005
40 AC to Cork, 20/1/1960
41 AC to Cork, 17/9/1961
42 This film starred Francesca Annis (as the invented character ‘Sheila Upward’) who would later play Lady Frances Derwent in the television adaptation of Why
Didn’t They Ask Evans?, one of the first of the Christie films to capitalise on the upper-class nostalgia boom of the 1980s; she also played Tuppence Beresford in the series Partners in Crime
43 A truly bizarre cast for this film included Anita Ekberg as ‘Amanda Beatrice Cross’, Robert Morley as Hastings and, in a small role, Austin Trevor, who had played Poirot in a 1934 film of Lord Edßware Dies
44 AC to Cork, 17/9/1961
45 AC to Lawrence Bachmann, 24/7/1963
46 Bachmann to AC, 7/4/1964. ‘A typical report on the proposed new incarnation of Poirot was this in the Daily Mail 5/3/1964, which quoted Zero Mostel thus: “I don’t know about the accent, but I’ll certainly give him an eye for the girls. He solves his cases – but there are usually eight corpses strewn about before the end, so he obviously isn’t so bright”.’
47 In Memories of Men and Women
48 Cork to AC, 9/4/1965
49 Agatha Christie Limited, of which Mathew Prichard is managing director, is now owned by Chorion PLC
50 In April 1977 it was reported that the Authors’ Division of Booker McConnell had increased its post-tax profits by more than a third to £487,000, ‘most of it attributable to Dame Agatha’, as The Times wrote
51 Mathew Prichard, in conversation with the author, 2006
52 Rosalind to Cork, 2/6/1956
53 Rosalind to Cork, 14/1/1957
54 Rosalind to Cork, 5/12/1958
55 Cork to Rosalind, 27/4/1962
56 Rosalind to Cork, 14/6/1962
57 Her distress was made plain in several newspaper articles; also in a letter to the crime writer Margaret Yorke, who had expressed her sympathy with Rosalind and spoken out in Agatha’s defence. ‘Naturally the programme was very unpleasant and hurtful for her family. It is unfair to make programmes like that about people who are dead and can’t answer for themselves . . . I was disappointed that there wasn’t more support for her in the press’
58 Rosalind to Cork, 29/3/1965
59 Rosalind to Margaret Yorke, 1992
60 AC to Rosalind, 5/4/1955
61 AC to Rosalind, sent from Swan Court, no date
62 In conversation with the author, 2003
63 In conversation with the author, 2006
64 In conversation with the author, 2006
65 In conversation with the author, 2006
66 Joan Oates, in conversation with the author
67 Ibid
68 In The Life of Max Mailman
69 Joan Oates, in conversation with the author
70 In conversation with the author
71 From Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days
72 Ibid
73 Pictured on the front of the original edition of Evelyn Waugh’s Edmund Campion-, Campion had set up his illegal printing press at Stonor in the 16th century
74 After Agatha’s death this car had been sold to Max, for a nominal fee, by Agatha Christie Limited
75 D. in conversation with the author, 2006
76 Ibid
77 Ibid
78 Ibid
79 Rachel Maxwell-Hyslop, in conversation with the author
80 D. in conversation with the author
81 AC to Rosalind, sent from Winterbrook, date incomplete
82 MM to AC, 9/9/1936
God’s Mark
1 Letter from Cork to Rosalind, 24/3/1960
2 AC to Cork, 9/4/1958
3 In The Guardian, 9/10/1987
4 Written in 1937 although not produced in Agatha’s lifetime, the play was sent to John Gielgud as a putative producer. ‘I think introspective characters like Akhnaton are inclined to be swallowed up in big productions,’ he wrote. ‘I also feel there is not enough humour, particularly after the First Act.’ When the play was staged in a London fringe theatre in 1980, it was drastically cut: ‘It’s a bold experiment and one well worth seeing,’ said The Guardian.
In 1973 the play was published, according to Agatha’s wishes (and on the back of the Tutankhamun exhibition at the British Museum). Edmund Cork had read it the year before and wrote to the Harold Ober agency: ‘We are tremendously impressed with it, and so is everyone who has read it.’ Dorothy Olding at Obers ‘thought Agatha’s play very interesting’. In his memoirs Max Mallowan called it ‘Agatha’s most beautiful and profound play’.
5 Mathew Prichard to Cork, 15/11/1961
6 AC to Cork, 2/1/1963
7 Dorothy Olding’s reaction, on reading in the newspapers that Agatha was to adapt Bleak House for the screen, was: ‘What gives? Agatha bored these days?’
8 Dorothy Olding to Cork, 30/6/1970
9 Stella Kirwan to Cork, 19/12/1962
10 Cork to Dorothy Olding, 18/8/1966
11 In conversation with the author
12 John Mallowan, in conversation with the author
13 In her 1970 interview with Gillian Franks
14 From Nemesis
15 Despite the little jibes he made against her in his wartime letters – he also called her a ‘martyr’ in a letter to Rosalind – Max attended Charlotte’s funeral
16 Cork to the Harold Ober agency, 21/6/1971
17 A. L. Rowse, in Memories of Men and Women
18 Released in 1970, the film starred Hywel Bennett, Hayley Mills and – as the girl in the scene to which Agatha objected – Britt Ekland
19 Dorothy Olding to Cork, 27/7/1973
20 The other book that Agatha wrote as her ‘insurance policy’ during the war, Sleeping Murder, was published after her death in 1976
21 In the book Where Was Rebecca Shot? (Phoenix 1998), which also contains a response to the essay from Ann Hart, author of a ‘biography’ of Poirot. She wrote that Curtain ‘has an air of senility about it’; not true, although her suggestion that Anthony Hicks might have helped excise any 1940 references from the manuscript is an intriguing one
22 AC to MM, sent from Ashfield, no date
23 MM to AC, 24/2/1943
24 In a letter to the author, 2006
25 In conversation with the author, 2006
26 In conversation with the author, 2006
27 Letter from Adelaide Ross to AC, 1/3/1966
28 Letter from Clara Bowring to AC, 14/9/1970
29 AC to Judith Gardner, 4/12/1959
30 The Queen sent a telegram to Max Mallowan after Agatha’s death. ‘Please be assured’, he replied, ‘that you had in us two grateful and loving subjects’
31 Letter from Peter Saunders to Rosalind, 7/11/1974
32 Letter from AC to Dorothy Claybourne, 21/10/1970
33 From Nemesis
Index
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
Note: ‘AC’ denotes Agatha Christie. Subheadings are in chronological order. Subscript numbers appended to page numbers indicate endnotes. Asterisks appended to page numbers indicate an attribution in the endnotes.
ABC Murders, The (Christie) 397, 51830; film 432
Abney Hall 43–4
Absent in the Spring (Westmacott) 125, 147–8, 162, 293, 323, 344
Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, The (Christie) 462
After the Funeral (Christie) 43; film (Murder at the Gallop) 430–31
Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days (Cade) 247–51
Agatha Christie Ltd 427–9, 434, 436–7
Agatha (film) 247
Akhnaton (Christie) 360
Alibi (play) 277
Alphabet Murders, The (film) 431
And Then There Were None (formerly Ten Little Niggers) (Christie) 22, 53, 317, 372, 386; play (Ten Little Niggers, Ten Little Indians) 333, 344–5, 348, 357, 362, 386, 461, 51385 ; film 357
anti-Semitism 145, 386–7
Appointment with Death (Christie) 84–5, 372, 388–9, 51129; play 349, 351
archaeology 275, 414–19, 444–5
Armstrong, Herbert 379
Arpachiyah 304
Asher
, Rosie 205–6, 236–7
Ashfield (house) 1–2, 4–7, 16, 39–41, 128, 170–73, 308–9
At Bertram’s Hotel (Christie) 24–5, 43, 403, 462, 469–71
Attlee, Clement 352, 51189 Australia 131, 136, 139, 140, 142
Bachmann, Lawrence 431, 432
Baillieu, Clive 153
Baird, N. J. H. 17
Bartlett (batman) 111
Bates, Francis 136
BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) 150
‘Being So Very Wilful’ (Christie) 87
Belcher, Major 135–6
Bell, Frick 142
Bell, Guilford 142, 310
Bell, Major 142
Bell, Una 142
Best (gypsy boy) 224
Bevan, Stuart 255–6
Big Four, Tie (Christie) 269, 277
Billington, Michael 459
Bingo (dog) 453, 475, 51210
Bishop, Stanley 230
Bisshop, Mrs (reported sighting of AC) 227
Black Coffee (Christie) 277, 300, 301
Bleak House (Dickens) 432–3, 437
Bodley Head 119–20, 149, 150, 152, 499,
Body in the Library, The (Christie) 344, 372, 384–5, 4973
Boehmcr, Clarissa (daughter of Mary Ann) see Miller
Boehmer, Ernest (son of Mary Ann) 10
Boehmer, Frederick (husband of Mary Ann) 9–10
Boehmer, Frederick (son of Mary Ann) 10
Boehmer, Harry (son of Mary Ann) 10
Boehmer, Mary Ann (née West) 9–11, 24, 31, 128
Booker McConnell (company) 434
Boué, Monsieur (singing teacher) 61
Brabourne, Lord 476
Bravo, Charles 379–80
Bravo, Florence 379–80
Brisley, Mr and Mrs (Greenway staff) 424
Brown, Mr (reported sighting of AC) 226
Burden, The (Westmacott) 19, 51–2, 90, 148, 366, 407–12
Burnett, Lady Sybil 321
By the Pricking of My Thumbs (Christie) 323, 400–401, 462, 471
Bywaters, Frederick 381
Cade, Jared 247–51, 438, 448–9
Calder, Ritchie 223, 230, 231, 246–7, 438
‘Call of Wings, The’ (Christie) 60, 63, 78
Camoys, Jeanne 451
Campbell Thompson, Barbara 302
Campbell Thompson, Dr (‘CT’) 301–2
Agatha Christie Page 60
