Swigatha: Recent Episodes
None
There has been much disappointment in some Agatha Christie circles (and relief in others) that there will be no Christie for Christmas on BBC1 this year: The Pale Horse will now be shown some time in the New Year. The new double-issue of Radio Times, which covers December 21st to January 3rd, offers plenty of […]
There is a positive riot of Agatha Christie on UK TV over the holiday period; it is becoming a Christmas tradition. A Christie for Christmas? Just slightly! It is almost impossible to list everything which is on, but here are some highlights to give a flavour of it, with two obvious stand-outs. SUNDAY, 23rd DECEMBERCHANNEL 5 9:00 […]
Four months after the death of Hercule Poirot, his friend and associate Captain Hastings is contacted by Poirot’s solicitors and given a letter from the dead man*. When Hastings has recovered from the shock of its contents, they ask if he will help them, for a fee, to tidy up some of Poirot’s business affairs. […]
ITV’s Poirot series ran from 1989 to 2013, and by its conclusion had covered just about every novel or short story featuring the Belgian detective that Agatha Christie wrote. The series was, and continues to be, hugely popular, and the face of David Suchet as Hercule Poirot is one of the most instantly-recognised faces anywhere in […]
Swigatha went to the ‘movies’ to check out the new version of Murder on the Orient Express. To say it has had a mixed reception in the press and on social media is to put it mildly – people either seem to love it or get bored by it. Of course, they are reviewing it […]
2017 Kenneth Branagh’s film version of Murder on the Orient Express will go on general release in November 2017. The previews have been available for a while. Branagh’s portrayal of Poirot, complete with luxurious moustaches, has already attracted a great deal of (not always complimentary) comment. It is likely that he has chosen, deliberately, to […]
Like many of Agatha Christie’s stories of the 1940s, A Murder is Announced is set firmly in the time that it was written (1947-9), with every character in it affected in one way or another by common features of the post-WW2 period in the UK: the rationing of everything, and the difficulties of finding one’s way and […]
During the days of 18-20 June, 2017 a conference was held at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge : ‘Agatha Christie – a re-appraisal’. There were two days of presentations and keynote speakers, with a getting-to-know-you session on the first evening and a reading of her play A Daughter is a Daughter on the second. This was […]
Burgh Island Books : a parlour game based on BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs programme, only this time our castaway is sent in isolation to Burgh Island off the coast of Devon, the setting for And Then There Were None Five Little Pigs – the finest Poirot adaptation yet : an in-depth look at the […]
Introduction Every reader’s experience of a book is affected by various elements, including its presentation (cover illustration, the paper, the font used), its provenance (where it came from) and the age and circumstance of the reader when they first read it. Even so, the primary stuff of a book is the language used in it, […]