I liked Agatha Christie’s books some 60 years ago, and I enjoyed this article about them.
However, I was expecting more about the trial. What strikes me about that is that the Sun could set the matter at rest by disclosing their source.
In science – and other areas of scholarship – you strengthen your argument and add to you credibility by saying where your information comes from. Journalists refuse to do this, in the ‘public interest’.
There are some circumstances where silence really is in the public interest. For example, the case of Chris Mullin and the Birmingham Six. Mullin’s promise not to disclose his sources Recently vindicated in the courts) enabled innocent men to be freed. This was clearly in the public interest.
But the Wagatha case? Is it in the public interest that our courts of law should tied up for so long with such an unimportant affair? Would not the public interest be best served by the Sun settling the matter by saying where it got its stories from?

“To take a single example, Polly Toynbee once claimed that her books are “suffused with a peculiar English snobbery” and located in “a realm of quite extraordinary fantasy, firmly set among the middle classes, on the uncomfortable presumption, perhaps, that the lower classes are too boring to write books about”.”

My goodness isn’t that some exquisite irony. Or stunning lack of self awareness on the part of Toynbee. Or both.

Evil Under The Sun…the film adaptation, with Peter Ustinov as Poirot and Diana Rigg as Arlena, is splendid. As a kid, I wore out the VCR tape we had it recorded on at the point where Jane Birkin’s character descends the stairs at the end, wearing the most magnificent hat. It made your heart skip a beat it was so dashing.

The Wagatha Christie furore seems to combine the very best and the very worst of Britain. I mean, where else would you find such tabloid-friendly wit with a handle like that? It’s genius.
On the other hand, where else would you find such brainless sensationalism? If these two jokers weren’t married to obscenely overpaid footballers, they’d be settling the score outside a kebab shop at 1am, handbags whistling through the air, manicured nails a-clawing. We are not fooled by the fancy outfits, ladies.

Entertaining fluff… but I read to the end.
“Christie only used four motives: greed, sex, revenge and fear of exposure.”
I’d add desire for status or celebrity to that, but then Agatha Christie had a winning formula which worked well enough in the society she based her stories in.

Thanks. Very funny, and it blows a hole in my assumption that because Christie is popular, she must be lowbrow. People make the same mistake with Dickens. I’m going to get a load of Agatha from Amazon and read the lot.

Agatha Christie presumably chose Harrogate because she felt no one would recognise her there. As for the choice of name, perhaps it is as mundane as her giving the first name that came into her mind when asked by the reception clerk at the hotel, that name being the name that had been going around her head ever since she had learnt of her husband’s infidelity.

This is a brilliant. and hugely entertaining, read. The serious point which is missing is the grotesque cost of mounting a defence against libel, which has been ruthlessly exploited by the Russian oligarchs to suppress exposure of their activities.
Still, at least we’ve got a great show here.

Try the audio version of this article. Ted Lasso reads UnHerd! Coleen Rooney as a character from Ozark has made my day!

Dominic tells a tale as few can. Cracking stuff!