A CHRISTIE CONVERSATION

In 1818 the poet John Keats wrote:

Over the hill and over the dale

And over the bourn to Dawlish-

Where gingerbread wives have a scanty sale

And gingerbread nuts are smallish

Last Monday, 13 September, Mr and Mrs Crime Scraps went over the hill to Dawlish, Teignmouth, Torquay, and visited Paignton's brand new £6.4 million lottery funded Library and community hub, to hear Mathew Prichard [Agatha Christie's grandson] and John Curran [author of Agatha Christie's Secret Notebook] in conversation.

That Monday was the opening day for the futuristic library, and it is a tribute to Mathew and John that they overcame teething troubles with the sound system to keep a packed audience enthralled for nearly an hour with their stories and anecdotes about the author.

Mathew welcomed the opening of the new library, and mentioned that his grandmother thought reading was such a very important activity for young people.

The previous day at the fete in Torquay, which began the week long Agatha Christie Festival to commemorate the 120th birthday of his grandmother, he had been asked if he would have his photograph taken with an 8 year old who had just read her first Agatha Christie novel.

John asked Mathew when he realised that his granny was a world famous personality, and we heard the story of the Christies for Christmas. At Mathew's boarding school all the books the pupils brought from home had to go up to be signed by the headmaster to ensure they were suitable reading for a young person. Mathew's Christies were always kept much longer than his friend's books. Years later he asked the headmaster why this had happened, and the headmaster replied that his wife had read them first!

Mathew recalled how his holiday trips as a child to Greenway were so thrilling, and how he looked forward to them so much. When his grandmother, and then his parents, died he thought Greenway died a little with them. The restoration by the National Trust had meant scaffolding and a canopy over the building, but when this came off the house came to life again and he was sure his grandmother would be happy to know that so many people could now enjoy the wonderful house and beautiful gardens with their magnificent view of the Dart.

When John Curran came to visit Greenway in 2005, before the National Trust restoration was started, it was a dark wintry night and the wonderful view escaped him. On a guided tour of the house in what was called the Fax Room he spotted a cardboard box with 73 old exercise and copy books......

John told us how he spent the next 24 hours reading the chaotic notebooks, and needed to be dragged away for meals.

Later John discovered two unpublished short stories in the notebooks; The Incident at Dog's Ball was written in 1933 and never offered for publication but transformed into the novel Dumb Witness in 1935.

John told us that the reason for the failure to publish the other story, The Capture of Cerebus was that it featured a character with the initials AH who had a bullet head and a dark moustache, and in 1939 this would not have been considered suitable escapist literature.

Mathew and John discussed future plans; and Christie fans have to look forward next year to another book by John devoted to the notebooks, computer games, TV and film adaptations, including six more Poirot adaptations with David Suchet, and the possibility Dead Man's Folly being filmed at Greenway. Mathew mentioned that one of his regrets is that his grandmother had never seen David Suchet's superb portrayal of her Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot.

John was asked how he explained the long term popularity of Agatha Christie. He thought it was mainly her readability, and the fact that although her plots were extremely ingenious, the solutions were simple when explained in the denouement.

Would any of today's crime writers be still be read in seventy or eighty years time? John did not think so.

Mathew and John were asked to pick a favourite "Desert Island" book and film. For his book Mathew chose Endless Night [1967], different in tone from her usual work, which he felt showed his grandmother's understanding of young people. For his film the TV adaptation of Five Little Pigs.

John chose the book of Five Little Pigs [1942], and the movie Murder on the Orient Express.

One questioner from the audience pointed out that Agatha Christie was unkind to children in the books, and Mathew was asked how she had appeared to him.

He looked surprised, and it was clear from his reply that his famous grandmother had doted on him.

Mathew then cut the birthday cake 'Delicious Death', and we were then ushered into another room for tea, our portions of Jane Asher's very rich chocolate cake [some of which, not mine, ended up on the brand new carpet], and a book signing.

The event was a stunning success judged by the rush to buy books, and have them signed by Mathew and John.

My only criticism was that the venue was not Greenway, but you can't have everything, and I so enjoyed the event that I bought both Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks by John Curran, and Agatha Christie, An Autobiography.

Greenway "The loveliest place in the world".

More from Greenway

This post is my contribution to the Agatha Christie Blog Tour hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise.

GREENWAY:"THE LOVELIEST PLACE IN THE WORLD"

Last month we visited Greenway, Agatha Christie's holiday home, which was given to the National Trust in 2000 by the family, daughter Rosalind and Anthony Hicks, and Agatha's grandson Mathew Prichard.

The house purchased by Agatha [known locally by her married name of Mrs Mallowan] and her second husband Max Mallowan [ later knighted for his services to archaeology] in 1938 for £6,000 has only been open to the public this year after a £5.4 million restoration.

The original dwelling on this site , Greenway Court, was a Tudor mansion but the present building dates from about 1780.

Details of opening times etc from the National Trust.

The house and gardens are situated on the River Dart and although you can approach by water we took our very small car, and pre-booked a parking space for a three hour stay. This is essential as they will turn you away if you come by car and have not booked and the approach roads are very narrow. The watery options were not feasible for us as we would have had to drive to Torquay, or Dartmouth or Totnes, parked and then taken the boat. Another factor is it is a steep climb of 800 yards up from the boat quay to the house. From bitter experience lanes and hills in Devon and Cornwall described as narrow and steep are very narrow and very steep.

From the car park there is a gentle down hill walk to the reception centre and house. It was a little bit tougher going back uphill weighed down with books and gifts. Those who have chosen the greener options by walking or arriving by boat are charged less for admission, but as National Trust members [a bargain for us retired folk] we get in for free.

You are given a timed ticket to enter the house and there is a short introductory talk, which among other facts mentioned that you can hire part of the house which has been arranged for self catering accommodation [sleeping ten] for about £2,500 in high season and a more manageable £750 approximately in February.

The interior of the house has been arranged to be exactly as it would have been in the 1950s.

The drawing room contained furniture brought and arranged by Agatha from Ashfield, her family home, and one could imagine her sitting reading her latest manuscript to the family after dinner.

Her clothes still hang in the dressing room and in the bedroom Max Mallowan's metal camp bed which he took on his archaeological trips is set up alongside the main bed. The effect is that you expect members of the family to come in and resume their lives at any minute.

During the autumn of 1943 Greenway was requisitioned by the Admiralty for the use of the United States Navy. Greenway became the Officers Mess for the 10th US Patrol Boat Flotilla, and their unofficial war artist Lt Marshall Lee painted a frieze around the walls of the library.

The whole interior is full of wonderful family mementos and gives a glimpse of how prosperous English gentry lived after the Second World War. We will certainly return because there is far too much to take in within one visit. In some National Trust properties furniture and books have to be brought in to fill the space, here it is all genuine Agatha and family. I was particularly interested as an old Dulwich resident that among all of her own books there was a copy of The House on Lordship Lane by A.E.W. Mason, author of The Four Feathers.

After leaving the house we had lunch, walked round a small part of the wonderful gardens and then spent far too long in the book/gift shop before happily trudging up the slope to the car park.

The superb collections of memorabilia in the house, the wonderful setting on the River Dart and the beautiful gardens made this a place we hope to return to again and again.

"We went to Greenway, and very beautiful the house and ground were. A white Georgian house of about 1780 or 90, with woods sweeping down to the Dart below, and a lot of fine shrubs and trees-the ideal house, a dream house...."

Agatha Christie

[ This post is part of Celebrating Agatha Christie week which is running at Mysteries in Paradise from 13-20 September]

GREENWAY AGAIN

Earlier this week we did our best to improve Anglo American relations by driving Mack and Marilyn Lundy [from Williamsburg VA] who were staying in Exeter to Greenway, Agatha Christie's home on the River Dart. Mack is the keeper of the blog Mack Captures Crime, an expert on Sherlock Holmes, and one of the winners of the Crime Scraps Marathon quiz. The previous day the Lundys had driven up on to Dartmoor negotiated the winding lanes and high hedgerows of Devon quite brilliantly and even found their way back to their hotel.

The traffic driving down to Greenway was very heavy but the location itself is so beautiful that it seems in a different world.

The photograph on the left shows Mack being congratulated on his excellent quiz performance. Mack liked this photo as he said it made him look taller and slimmer.

Of course when two huge male intellects meet the conversation was on a very high philosophical level.

"The other winners would have got a kiss, but you are definitely not getting one."

"I don't want one!"

"I wish you were ******"

"I wish YOU were ******"

We then adjourned for the drive back along the alternative coastal route through Paignton and Torquay [apparently a bit like Myrtle Beach, S.C. in places] and stopped to enjoy a meal at an award winning fish and chip restaurant in Babbacombe. The only disappointment was that by the time we came out it was very dark so that Mack and Marilyn could not enjoy the magnificent sea and estuary views as we drove back to Exeter via Shaldon, Teignmouth, Dawlish and Starcross.

LIBRARY OR COMMUNITY HUB

I am an old fashioned grumpy, and I like my libraries to look like a library, and not to be used for other purposes. A library should be a place that raises the human spirit, and gives a feeling of well being and contentment.

Last month I went to a Christie conversation at Paignton Library and Community Hub.

Some of the overseas visitors had just been to Agatha Christie's beautiful home at Greenway, and coming on to the library must have been an interesting contrast.

Greenway is situated at an idyllic location on the River Dart, Paignton's £6.5 million lottery funded library is not.

The traffic roars past the library, and the surrounding area must be one of the bleakest places in what is one of England's loveliest counties. I think libraries should be places to seek enlightenment and to have moments of quiet reflection reading a newspaper, or a book, or looking up facts in reference books or even on a computer.

I am sorry to say Paignton's library is like a busy train station that seems to have been designed by Albert Speer, and Wayne Rooney after a night out on the tiles. The upper floor was being advertised for rent at £17,000 a year, which would leave the train station downstairs on its own.

The library is also a community hub with offices for the police, a benefits office, and a small cafe. The toilet facilities were clearly inadequate for use by large numbers of visitors; and this had been recognised because the staff had their own facility protected by a code entry system.

But my main criticism is that the library/hub is situated on a site which is isolated by a stream of fast traffic. The pedestrian crossing is situated at the point where the vehicles reach maximum speed, and an elderly person weighed down by a few books would need to be fairly nifty on their feet to get across.

I suppose after the pending budget cuts we will be lucky to keep any of our libraries in any form, so perhaps I should not complain.

[The three photos of the library, and one of Greenway, don't actually convey the cheerlessness of one, and the beauty of the other.]

MORE FROM GREENWAY

Thanks to all those people who said they enjoyed the "virtual trip" to Greenway. I will be going to Torquay next month and hope to see some of the Christie sites I missed on my last visit.

THE RIVER DART FROM GREENWAY

The River Dart as seen from Greenway.

SUNSHINE AND SEA

The weather yesterday was not conducive to reading a novel set in dark stormy Northern Scotland, The Redemption of Alexander Seaton by Rhona MacLean.

It was one of those balmy days when the English Riviera really lived up to its name.

I sat wasting an hour or more looking out from the cliffs near Babbacombe Theatre at the view I had wanted to show Mack and Marilyn Lundy. It is one of the loveliest places to waste time in the South West. There were several 'old boys' who had nodded off in the sunshine, and probably some of them were younger than me.

From yesterday's Torquay Herald:

Torbay has earned around £2.2 million of publicity so far this year.

Almost 40 journalists who visited the resort through the English Riviera Tourist Board wrote articles which would have cost that much if they had been advertising.

Members of the tourist industry heard at a special briefing that the opening of Dame Agatha's home Greenway had been of particular interest to writers who had come from as far afield as New York, and worked for magazines such as Country Life.

A film crew came over from Korea for a piece on Agatha Christie.

AGATHA CHRISTIE BLOG TOUR AND FESTIVAL

The Agatha Christie Blog Tour is running the whole month of September to celebrate the 120th anniversary of the birth of the great crime writer. You can read the Blog Tour schedule, and link to some excellent posts here at Kerrie's Mysteries in Paradise.

Here is the full program for the Agatha Christie Festival 12 -19th September, which is taking place in Torbay.

I shall be attending "Matthew Prichard and John Curran in conversation" which I note is sold out, as are some of the much more expensive celebratory events. In the current recession this is surely a sign of the enduring popularity of Agatha Christie, and the affection in which she is held by the people of Devon as well as the thousands who travel from all over the world for this festival, and to visit the author's beautiful holiday home at Greenway.

Listening to the discussion will be interesting enough, but the promise of a 'cup of tea and special birthday cake' is definitely not to be missed. I shall be posting about this event, hopefully with some photos, as part of the blog tour on 16 September BST.

I do hope the weather will be better next week for the festival, and our trip down to the English Riviera, because today the rain is bucketing down in a constant deluge.

Much more like Devon than a Riviera.

THIS LITTLE PIGGY.....

Last week I had to go away for a couple of days, and the question of what book to take arose. Do I take the hardback I was reading, or do I pick up an easy to pack paperback book from my TBR mountain?

This is where the marketing and publishing of Agatha Christie's vast output of novels is so good. The 2007 signature editions are just the right size to be slipped into a bag or case and a readable length.

I went to Agatha Christie's Greenway home twice last year, trudged up and down Torquay seafront photographing Christie sites, and went to a conversation last month about Agatha Christie at Paignton's Library and Community Hub, but I had not actually read any of her books for about 40 years.

It was time to remedy that situation by reading Five Little Pigs, which was named by John Curran, author of Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks, as one of her ten best novels.

Caroline Crale was tried and convicted of the murder of her husband, painter Amyas Crale, but because of mitigating circumstances the sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. She died only a year after the trial.

Sixteen years later her daughter, Carla Lemarchant, returns to England from Canada and asks Hercule Poirot to investigate the murder. When Carla was twenty one she had been given a letter her mother had written before her death insisting on her innocence.

If Caroline did not kill Amyas Crale there were five other "little pigs" who could have done it.

The suspects:

Philip Blake, a close friend of Amyas, a stockbroker, who went to market.

Meredith Blake, an amateur herbalist, who stayed at home.

Elsa Greer, a three time divorcee, now Lady Dittisham, who had her roast beef.

Cecilia Williams, the devoted governess, who had none.

Angela Warren, the disfigured sister, who cried all the way home.

Poirot, interviews the barristers, solicitors and police superintendent, before going on to speak to the five suspects, and persuade them all to write their own accounts of the events that occurred sixteen years previously. The novel is beautifully structured, as Christie produces what amounts to a character study of each of five very different suspects, and then in a classic denouement Poirot reconstructs the murder leading the reader to the wrong conclusion, before unmasking the real perpetrator.

On the evidence of Five Little Pigs, written in 1942, Agatha Christie is an underestimated writer, because not only is this novel entertaining with its clues and puzzle to solve, but contains character studies and a lot of social commentary.

Perhaps it is because she sells in such vast quantities that other authors enjoy taking pot shots at her novels.

P.D. James objects to 'her cardboard cut out characters', and the American Edmund Wilson objected to her on the grounds that he liked murders that happened 'for a reason, rather than just to provide a body'. [from an article by Lucy Mangan in today's Guardian]

But in Five Little Pigs her characters are sharply drawn, believable [for 1942] and quite sensitive to the way society is moving.

Miss Williams the governess for instance.

Poirot said: ' You hold no brief for men?'

She answered drily:

'Men have the best of this world. I hope it will not always be so.'

And later.

'I feel very strongly about the marriage tie. Unless it is respected and upheld, a country degenerates.'

Five Little Pigs is a brilliant example of Agatha Christie's detective fiction, with just the right number of suspects, red herrings, interestingly flawed characters and teasers to leave the reader entertained, and satisfied by the experience.

Hercule Poirot said:

'Have you ever reflected, Mr Blake, that the reason for murder is nearly always to be found by a study of the person murdered?'

'I hadn't exactly--yes I suppose I see what you mean.'

Poirot said:

'Until you know exactly what sort of a person the victim was, you cannot begin to see the circumstances of a crime clearly.'

MARCH MINI QUIZ: THE ANSWERS

Thanks to everyone who took part in this quiz. I always learn something new when the "super brains" of my visitors get working on my questions.

I am keeping tally of the score and there will be only eight more monthly questions in this quiz marathon so don't be shy you can still enter in the next few months and have a chance of winning. The main contenders at present come from Australia, Denmark, Scotland, Wales and the USA.

Who and what were connected  with:

1) Kelmscott Manor- William Morris and textiles or the pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and poetry.

2) Greenway- Agatha Christie and crime fiction.

3) Hughenden Manor- Benjamin Disraeli: politics and novels.

4) Lacock Abbey- William Fox Talbot and early photography.

Thanks for all the fascinating extra information I got about Ela, Countess of Salisbury, and the Dissolution of the Monasteries, plus the film buffs who told me Harry Potter and The Other Boleyn Girl were filmed at Lacock Abbey.

I shall have to make the questions more difficult. 

GOOD DAYS

This year has been full of what Harold Macmillan would call 'events, my dear boy, events'.

One of life's pleasant events occurred yesterday when two very kind fellow bloggers gave me awards.

Margot Kinsberg at Confessions of a Mystery Novelist named Crime Scraps as an Inspiring Blog.

Rob Kitchin at The View From The Blue House named Crime Scraps as one of his ten must read blogs of the year.

The pressure is now on to keep producing some interesting posts in 2010, such as 2009's :

The Dartmoor Dozen with the very funny Donna Moore as a guest blogger.

The interviews with Rebecca Cantrell and Philip Kerr.

The trips to Crime Fest 2009 and Agatha Christie's Greenway.

MINI QUIZ NUMBER TWO: ENGLISH HOUSES

It is March so it must be time for the next mini quiz in which you can accumulate points towards winning a Grand Prize later in the year. 

The first mini quiz was about Sweden's five minority languages and the five winners came from Denmark, New Mexico, Texas, Virginia and Wales. 

This quiz is about English houses and homes and the people who lived and worked in them:

An example, Chartwell is the home of Sir Winston Churchill, and would be associated with his historical writing and politics.

Who and what are associated with:

1] Kelmscott Manor

2] Greenway

3] Hughenden Manor

4] Lacock Abbey

Answers to thbear08@googlemail.com please.

GENDER INEQUALITY

As I start reading my 37th crime fiction book of the year I realise that the number of books I have read has been greatly reduced by the weeks I spent dosed up on those scrumptious codeine tablets after my accident and operation.

I have also noted that of those 37 books only nine have been written by women.

This is an unfortunate bias, and with such a record I might be banned from the grounds of Greenway, home of the greatest of female crime writers.

Therefore I have created my own personal challenge to remedy this state of affairs, and read more books written by female crime writers.

CELEBRATING AGATHA CHRISTIE: DAY 6

Here is the link to Day 6 of Celebrating Agatha Christie week which is running at Mysteries in Paradise from 13-20 September.

Today you will be directed back here to my Greenway, the loveliest place in the world post, but do look at the other contributions to this blog tour, they are all very interesting.

ROB'S CLASSIC CRIME FICTION CURRICULUM CHALLENGE

Rob's challenge over at The View From The Blue House is to choose ten pre-1970 classic crime books for someone who has only read contemporary crime fiction. I covered some of this ground with my Dartmoor Dozen choices [click and scroll down for all the posts on this subject] last year but decided to slightly vary my choices this time, although of course there are some authors and some books you just cannot ignore in making a classic crime fiction selection.

1] The Moonstone: Wilkie Collins 1868

2] The Hound of the Baskervilles: Arthur Conan Doyle 1902

3] The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: Agatha Christie 1926

4] The Maltese Falcon: Dashiell Hammett 1930

5] Gaudy Night: Dorothy L. Sayers 1935

6] Farewell, My Lovely: Raymond Chandler 1940

7] The ABC Murders: Agatha Christie 1936

8] The Talented Mr Ripley: Patricia Highsmith 1957

9] From Doon With Death: Ruth Rendell 1964

10] Roseanna: Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo 1965

No apologies for choosing two books by Agatha Christie after my multiple visits to Greenway last year I had to restrain myself from choosing more.