Agatha Christie

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pete9012S
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by pete9012S »

I know Greenway is definitely open - as I would love to go and even better stay there!

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/greenw ... t-greenway" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by sixret »

Oppsss... When I wrote it yesterday, I had Greenway in mind. Not Winterbrook. Somehow my mind got confused and muddled. :oops: :oops:

Thank you, Pete. :D
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by Eddie Muir »

pete9012S wrote:I know Greenway is definitely open - as I would love to go and even better stay there!

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/greenw ... t-greenway" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Thanks for this very useful link, Pete. :D
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by pete9012S »

sixret wrote: Somehow my mind got confused and muddled...
Don't worry sixret,that's how I am on a good day! :wink:
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by Chrissie777 »

pete9012S wrote:I know Greenway is definitely open - as I would love to go and even better stay there!

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/greenw ... t-greenway" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Thanks, Pete! Put it on my England list for 2020. 8)
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by Chrissie777 »

Moonraker wrote:Chrissie, I have three books to which I constantly refer. A Talent to Deceive - An Appreciation of Agatha Christie, by Robert Barnard (plot summaries of all her books are given - no spoilers!) and The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie, by Charles Osborne. The third, The Agatha Christie Who's Who, by Randall Toye, lists every character from every book, stating the name of the book and brief character description. Again, no spoilers.
I believe they might be out of print, but an internet search may well find copies.
I was also given The World of Agatha Christie, by Martin Fido, which makes an interesting read. Google* for further information, Chrissie.
Nigel, while I'm still waiting for the 4 books that you've recommended to arrive at our public library, I finished the book on AC by Mary Wagoner which is o.k., but somehow I was hoping for more information. And I am almost through with "AC and the 11 Missing Days" by Jared Cade. It's very well written and reminded me of a long forgotten AC crime novel called "Passenger to Frankfurt" which I wanted to read for years and years, but never got around to it.
Did you read it?
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by Moonraker »

Yes, I have, Chrissie. In fact, I have read all of Christies books/short stories. P2F is a good read, although my favourites of her books centre around a country house setting.

We are going to see A Murder is Announced at out local theatre, tonight. Only thing is, Miss Marple is played by Louise Jameson - complete with blond curls. As if!

http://www.salisburyplayhouse.com/uploa ... ge/971.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (far left)
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by Julie2owlsdene »

How wizard, Nigel. Wish I could see it. Hope it comes to the Hall for Cornwall. :D

Just a look at the tour dates left and the ones gone! The furthest South West they came was Exeter!! Why do we get forgotten over the Tamar Bridge!!! :roll:

8)
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by Chrissie777 »

Moonraker wrote:Yes, I have, Chrissie. In fact, I have read all of Christies books/short stories. P2F is a good read, although my favourites of her books centre around a country house setting.
We are going to see A Murder is Announced at out local theatre, tonight.
Great, then I will request it from our library. 8)
I love the country house settings, too, in her books and in the TV movie versions.
Watching "Dead Man's Folly" filmed at Greenway in Devon was absolutely beautiful!
Two nights ago we've watched "The Pale Horse" from the TV series "Agatha Christie's Marple" and it was great!

Enjoy your theatre play, Nigel! :D
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by Moonraker »

It was a good play. Two characters were omitted (one was a murder victim in the book), the misses Hinchcliffe and Murgatroyd (lesbians in the recent ITV adaptation). One actress totally overacted her part and Miss Marple wasn't very good, but I went with one of my sons and we both enjoyed it. Where else other than a theatre could you have a man asleep, waking himself up snoring sat next to you, a man immediately behind belching throughout the performance and his accompanied person emptying her giant handbag trying to find her ringing phone? All adds to the experience!
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by Rob Houghton »

Sounds like a few murders might easily have been committed in the auditorium too... :lol:
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by Moonraker »

Plenty of motive, to say the least!

On a more serious note, I was saddened to read of the passing of Charles Osbourne in yesterday's Telegraph. You have to pay to read the complete article. It was most interesting. He wrote one of the books I recommended to Chrissie.

Image

This is possibly harder to read than Enid's letters in Teachers World!
Last edited by Moonraker on 15 Oct 2017, 15:59, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by sixret »

Thanks for the news, Nigel. It is a sad news. I have Life and Crime of Agatha Christie. I enjoyed reading it years ago.
I stand with justice and the truth. Palestine will be free from the river to the sea.

Learn the history. Do research.

The hypocrisy, double standard, prejudice and bigotry own by some people is so obvious.Shame on them!
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by pete9012S »

On a festive note,here's some info about a house Agatha Christie's sister lived in that inspired and was used as a setting in some books:

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Why Agatha Christie loved Cheshire and spending Christmas at Abney Hall.
Childhood memories of magical Christmases in Cheshire never left the best-selling author, ‘The Queen of Crime’, Agatha Christie.

Although Agatha Christie was born in Torquay and her home from 1938 until her death in 1976 overlooked the River Dart - her fame plays a significant part in the local tourist industry - it was not Devon but Cheadle that fired her imagination as a young girl and set her on course to write 66 novels in a remarkable career lasting more than half a century.

Greenway House is now owned by the National Trust and open to the public and is said to have inspired three of her stories. But Abney Hall, owned by her brother-in-law Sir James Watts, who married her elder sister Margaret - “Madge” - in 1902, cast a spell that Christie never forgot. She was 70 when she recalled the ‘superb and wonderful’ Christmas hospitality at Abney Hall in the foreword of what she described as ‘her book of Christmas fare’.

‘The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding,’ she wrote, ‘is an indulgence of my own, since it recalls to me, very pleasurably, the Christmases of my youth. After my father’s death, my mother and I always spent Christmas with my brother-in-law’s family in the north of England - and what superb Christmases they were for a child to remember! Abney Hall had everything! The garden boasted a waterfall, a stream, and a tunnel under the drive! The Christmas fare was of gargantuan proportions. I was a skinny child, appearing delicate, but actually of robust health and perpetually hungry!

‘The boys of the family and I used to vie with each other as to who could eat most on Christmas Day. Oyster soup and turbot went down without undue zest, but then came roast turkey, boiled turkey and an enormous sirloin of beef. The boys and I had two helpings of all three! We then had plum pudding, mince pies, trifle and every kind of dessert.

‘During the afternoon we ate chocolates solidly. We neither felt, nor were, sick!

How lovely to be eleven years old and greedy! What a day of delight from ‘Stockings’ in bed in the morning, church and all the Christmas hymns, Christmas dinner, presents, and the final lighting of the Christmas tree! And how deep my gratitude to the kind and hospitable hostess who must have worked so 
hard to make Christmas Day a wonderful memory to me still in my old age. So let me dedicate this book to the memory of Abney Hall, its kindness and its hospitality. And a happy Christmas to all who read this book.”

There is no trace of Christie’s legacy at Abney Hall; no blue plaque. Yet the influence of Watts, Madge and the house itself was to be profound. It was Madge who first challenged Agatha, 11 years her junior, to write a story in the genre of Gaston Leroux’s classic 1908 detective adventure, The Mystery of the Yellow Room – and eight years later, she did.

Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was published in 1916, ‘borrowed’ much of its country house setting from Abney Hall and introduced the enduring character of Hercule Poirot to the world of detective fiction. Abney Hall has also been closely linked with other stories. Vanessa Allen, in her 2004 book Agatha Christie: A Readers’ Companion, wrote: “Abney became Agatha’s greatest inspiration for country house life, with all the servants and grandeur which have been woven into her plots. The descriptions of the fictional Styles, Chimneys, Stoneygates and the other houses in her stories are mostly Abney in various forms.”

In her autobiography, published the year after her death, Christie revealed that the basic idea for what avid fans regard as her masterpiece, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, was first given to her by her brother-in-law James Watts of Abney Hall. In a conversation one day he suggested a unique idea for a novel which Agatha considered it to be ‘a remarkably original thought’.

Abney Hall, where she wrote a second book, After the Funeral, is also said to have provided a private sanctuary for Agatha Christie after her eleven-day ‘disappearance’ in 1926, following a nervous breakdown in the wake of her mother’s death and the failure of her marriage. She had gone missing from home, sparking a huge police hunt and media circus, only to turn up, having apparently lost her memory, in a Harrogate hotel.

Abney Hall was sold to the former Cheadle and Gatley urban district council in 1959 for the princely sum of £14,000 and became Cheadle town hall. When local government was reorganised in 1974 and the area became part of the enlarged Stockport Metropolitan Borough, the hall’s historical pieces were removed to the town’s museums. Bought by the property firm Bruntwood in 1983, Abney Hall today houses commercial offices and is set in a public park.
Last edited by pete9012S on 20 Nov 2017, 15:24, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Agatha Christie

Post by Courtenay »

You've gone and done the Roger Ackroyd spoiler there, Pete — although I'd heard it before, which is the main reason why I've never bothered to read that one, because I already know the twist... :twisted:
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