Every year, on the week of Agatha Christie’s birthday, a festival is held in Torquay, her birthplace, to celebrate her life and works. There’s a great variety of events, centring around talks on Christie-related topics, but also featuring plays, tours, and murder mystery events. This year, I attended it for the first time! I’ve always been put off by the distance, but it was very much worth making the trip.
I started things off by watching the Peter Ustinov Evil Under the Sun for the first time, in a rather unusual location – Kent’s Cavern, a cave system in the middle of Torquay. The movie was very entertaining, streamlining the cast and adding a load of witty banter. The investigation section moves at a beautifully sharp pace, leading up to the revelation that literally everybody has an alibi, even if Poirot’s preferred investigative technique of accusing everyone in turn of the murder is a bit silly. There are a few plot holes but it was a fun watch, and successfully distracted me from the fact I was watching it sitting on a deckchair in a damp cavern while a plastic caveman crouched beside me kindling a fire.
Next was a fascinating visit to Greenway House, Agatha Christie’s holiday home beside the river Dart. The house and guidebook are packed with interesting facts about the house and how it has been used throughout the years.
Then a presentation by Dr Mark Aldridge and Gray Robert Brown of the Swinging Christies podcast, which really was like being right there for one of their podcast recordings, and was a lot of fun – the podcast has fast become a must-listen for me.
Departing from Christie-land for a bit, I explored up and down the coast from Torquay. If I’m on or near a coastline I can’t be prevented from walking along it. I had a blissful day at Berry Head and a strenuous one walking the South-West Coast Path.
This did mean I didn’t catch all of the talks, and in fact I couldn’t get tickets for some that I really wanted to!
I did make it to the two adaptation-related talks. Teresa Peschel showed off the wild and wonderful range of worldwide Christie adaptations, and Kemper Donovan and a panel of experts showed off the many disagreements it’s possible to have when selecting the “best” adaptation of all.
My experience of adaptations is pretty limited, and I left the talks with a long to-watch list. I’m particularly intrigued by the Swedish Hjerson and by the Russian adaptation of Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? The Hungarian version of The Mysterious Affair at Styles looks like an “experience”.
If it’s true that things often get lost in adaptation, well, we’ve already lost a huge amount of context through the passage of time, and Agatha Annotated is a website and book created by Kate and Don Gingold which aims to help us modern readers recover some of that context. Next there were a few history lessons. Caitlin Davies ran through the fascinating history of real-life female private detectives, which at one time were numerous and have seen falls and rises in fortune over the two centuries since they began to appear. Carla Valentine talked about the equally fascinating – though slightly more gruesome – topic of real-life murder cases that Christie mentioned in her books, and the forensic science connected to them. By this point I’d picked up a whole stack of non-fiction books which I can’t wait to read (actually I didn’t wait to read them, I’ve already finished two of them).
The final day – Agatha Christie’s birthday, in fact – it was all Christie all the time (after a quick visit to the lovely gardens and fascinating museum at nearby Torre Abbey).
Dr John Curran talked about the detectives parodied, sorry, pastiched in Tommy and Tuppence’s Partners in Crime collection, and the varied fortunes of their authors, as well as a chronological mystery (if you have the December 1923 issue of The Grand magazine, Dr Curran would like to hear from you). David Morris went in-depth on the first-edition covers of Christie’s books; even the most seemingly-simple covers were designed by someone, and it was interesting to watch tastes change over the years. I love the style of some of those classic covers.
There was an authors-in-convesation event featuring Icelandic author Ragnar Jónasson and Australian author Benjamin Stephenson, contemporary writers who also love classic crime fiction. Unfortunately the chaos of the TBR pile means I’ve yet to read either of them, but the conversation was interesting and informative, and I’m sure I’ll get to some of their books soon. I will say that though both of them know exactly what a “locked room mystery” is, evidence suggests that publishers have obliterated its meaning through sheer force of marketing, and it’s unlikely to be recovered (…I just heard Christie biographer Lucy Worsley abuse it in a podcast I was listening to).
The final event was kicked off by Brad Friedman of Ah Sweet Mystery!, who gave a speech encompassing the game and rules of detective fiction, the changes in bridge during the early 20th century, examples of the “bridge mystery” microgenre (special mention to the late Noah Stewart who collected them), and an analysis of what makes Christie’s Cards on the Table such a unique and notable mystery novel. And on top of all that, he was funny too! After this we got a crash course in bridge from Alex Maddocks (emphasis on the crash in my case). I’m afraid I’ve let Brad down and still barely understand bridge, though to be fair Alex said he usually takes eight weeks to properly teach someone to play. I do know what a trick-taking game is now, though. I think.
Of course the most special part of the event is all the lovely people there. As with other events, I met up with some fellow Shedunnit book club members, and chatted to fellow bloggers Brad and John, not to mention the many friendly authors and fellow attendees. I had a wonderful week and will certainly try and return next year as well.
