For those who don’t know, Burgh Island has many Christie connections, from influencing the likes of Evil Under the Sun and And Then There Were None, to as a filming location for adaptations in the Joan Hickson Miss Marple and David Suchet Poirot series.
It’s been a busy couple of months with the launch of my new book Agatha Christie’s Marple: Expert on Wickedness, now out worldwide. The UK publication neatly coincided with the International Agatha Christie Festival in Torquay, which meant there were plenty of opportunities to discuss my work. This included sell-out talks on both Miss Marple and, with Gray Robert Brown, our podcast The Swinging Christies. We even teamed up with Kemper Donovan of All About Agatha for a special crossover episode!
Kemper Donovan, me, Gray Robert Brown
Elsewhere, I’ve been doing plenty of publicity, including an appearance on ITV’s Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh, which you can watch below. We were keenly overlooked by quite the collection of Miss Marples!
It had been lovely to see the positive reception that my book has received. I was particularly thrilled to get such a good write-up from Nicola Upson in the Times Literary Supplement.
I have plenty of plans in place for next year, including two projects that I was the consultant for. I’m very excited about them, but can’t say much more yet! All will be revealed in the next couple of months…
As we move towards the publication of my book Agatha Christie’s Marple: Expert on Wickedness, so I start to give more talks, and I’m delighted to return to Wallingford’s Corn Exchange on 6 September.
I’m very happy to be giving a FREE talk about Margaret Rutherford’s Miss Marple on 14 June as part of Solent University’s Open House month. You can register for tickets here. Hope to see you there…
In the run-up to the publication of my new Marple book in late summer (sorry for the publication delay, it’s due to pictures taking time and bookseller preferences!), I will be speaking at a few events in June. I’ll give a talk at Bodies from the Library at the British Library on 1 June 2024, and be in conversation at both Belfast Book Festival (11 June 2024) and Felixstowe Book Festival (29 June 2024). More to come!
I’m so excited to launch The Swinging Christies, a new podcast co-presented and co-produced with the writer Gray Robert Brown. It looks at Agatha Christie in the 1960s and, among other things, argues for a reappraisal of her later work. You can find episodes on all major podcast platforms, including Spotify, Audible and Apple Podcasts. More info over at Christietime.com.
Artwork by Bartlett Studio
I’m also honoured to say that I will be one of the speakers at this year’s Bodies from the Library event, taking place at the British Library on 1 June. Tickets available from their website now.
This year has probably been the busiest yet for me, such is the continuing popularity of Agatha Christie.
In September I had a wonderful time speaking at the International Agatha Christie Festival in Torquay. I arrived straight from the Agatha Christie Conference at the University of Exeter, where I was one of the keynotes, and at the end of the week it was great to give the after dinner speech at Greenway House, Christie’s holiday home, on her birthday.
Speaking at Greenway
Most recently I was thrilled to be invited to India to speak at the Dehradun Literature Festival. My wonderful hosts ensured that this was a great event. I particularly enjoyed running a workshop for local children, where we used some of Christie’s techniques to create their own stories.
At the Dehradun Literature Festival
My next event is the Agatha Christie Festival Internacional in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife. It’s always a brilliant event and I can’t wait to talk about Miss Marple. There is much more to come next year in support of my forthcoming book Agatha Christie’s Marple: Expert on Wickedness, which you can preorder at Amazon UK now, if you’re keen… There is also The Swinging Christies, a new podcast project that I’m doing with the writer Gray Robert Brown. More on that soon!
Recording The Swinging Christies with co-host and co-producer Gray Robert Brown
All in all, it’s an exciting time to be researching Agatha Christie!
Great to see that tickets for the International Agatha Christie Festival are on sale now! I’m taking parts in three of the events: the All About Agatha discussion (14 Sept), speaking after dinner at Greenway (15 Sept), and giving a talk about Margaret Rutherford’s Miss Marple before a screening of Murder at the Gallop (16 Sept). I have lots of new and fun info to share, so hope to see some of you there!
Tickets available to buy here (at the time of writing, the Greenway dinner is not yet on sale – keep an eye out if you’re keen as it goes quickly). Of course, there are loads of other great events going on as well.
Registration is also open for the Agatha Christie Conference, taking place 12-13 Sept. I’m one of the two keynotes and will be asking what we know about Miss Marple, as I share some of the research for my next book.
It has been quite a busy couple of months for me because 12 November saw the publication of Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World in the UK! If you haven’t got your hands on a copy yet what are you waiting for?! It even features a foreword by Mark Gatiss! You can see links to various online retailers here – including The Book Depository, which ships internationally for free for those of you outside the UK. I hope that you enjoy it if you do buy it.
I’ve also taken part in two forthcoming TV documentaries, and so there’s not avoiding me yet! I’ll share more details when I’m able to, but one is due at Christmas and the other at Easter 2021. I was also in a Channel 5 documentary recently, which has been put on YouTube – my interview was filmed as soon as we came out of the first lockdown, which explains my bizarre hair!
Anyway, that’s enough self-publicity for today – I just hope you enjoy the book! And if you do, feel free to tell others, including through reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. It is very difficult to get the word out when you launch a book while all the bookshops are closed…
Dr Mark Aldridge 