Christie on Radio
The Radio Plays
As well as Three Blind Mice (1947), Christie wrote three other radio plays between 1937 and 1954.
The Yellow Iris was first broadcast on the BBC National Programme (as it was then called) on Tuesday, November 2, 1937 at 8.00pm. The script was based on the short story, Yellow Iris, which had been published in issue 559 of the Strand Magazine in July of the same year. The main part of the story takes place in a London restaurant and the play was unusual in that the producer, Douglas Moodie, interspersed the action with the performances of the cabaret artistes who were supposedly on the bill at the restaurant. The short story was later expanded by Christie into the 1945 full-length novel Sparkling Cyanide.
Butter in a Lordly Dish (this time an half-hour radio play) was first performed on the BBC Radio Light Programme on Tuesday January 13, 1948 at 9.30pm in a strand entitled Mystery Playhouse presents The Detection Club. No recording exists and the play has never been commercially published. It remains one of Christie's least-known works. The title comes from the Bible: Judges, 5:25 - "He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish". "He" refers to Sisera and "she" is Jael. In the Bible, Jael kills Sisera by hammering a nail through his head. The same fate awaits Sir Luke Enderby in Christie's play.
The play was one of a series of six written by members of the Detection Club to raise funds for the organisation.
The last radio play Personal Call broadcast on the BBC Radio Light Programme on Monday, May 31, 1954 at 8.30pm. The play reuses the character of Inspector Narracott from the 1931 novel The Sittaford Mystery.