The Queen of Crime
Christie Week 2008 : Lost tapes discovered!
Amazing announcement kicks off Christie Week 2008!
The collection of 27 reels of tape, comprising 13½ hours of Christie’s voice, have been positively identified as the original tapes onto which the author dictated her autobiography. The recordings were discovered by Mathew Prichard in a cardboard box in a storeroom at Christie’s former home outside Torquay earlier this year. Also discovered alongside the tapes was the Grundig Memorette reel-to-reel tape recorder on which the recordings were made. The tapes comprise approximately the final third of the manuscript of Christie's 500-page autobiography and are believed to date from the early to mid-1960s. Christie began writing the book in Iraq in April 1950 and completed it some 15 years later in England in October 1965. Agatha Christie: An Autobiography was published posthumously in 1977. The astonishing find, which comprises completely unedited material, goes into far greater detail about some aspects of Christie’s life than the finished book, including philosophical musings and reflections on her life and times.
Christie Week Events
The aim of Christie week is to both provoke a critical reassessment of the literary legacy of the Queen of Crime and celebrate her position as a British cultural icon.
Among the week’s events are:
15th-21st September: The annual English Riviera Agatha Christie Festival, featuring guided tours of the author’s home town of Torquay; screenings of Christie films; a murder mystery dinner; and a talk by her grandson, Mathew Prichard.
Tuesday 16th September at 2.45pm A unique performance of Christie’s classic play The Mousetrap at London’s St Martin’s Theatre for 200 children from disadvantaged neighbourhoods in and around London, presented by Agatha Christie Ltd, HarperCollins and the theatre charity, Mousetrap Theatre Projects.
The release of stylish range of porcelain mugs, deckchairs and canvas bookbags based on classic Christie covers by Art Meets Matter, the cutting edge English design company behind the famous Penguin Classic collection.
13-20 September: Agatha Christie Week on BBC7 with dramatisations of the Poirot adventures After the Funeral and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe and the Marple mystery Sleeping Murder. Also included is a reading of 8.55 To Baghdad, in which writer Andrew Eames follows in the footsteps of Agatha Christie's true life exploits in the Middle East.
15 September: The official publication date of the definitive three-volume edition of Agatha Christie’s Short Stories by HarperCollins, the first such collection ever attempted. Many of the 176 stories were originally written for popular weekly and monthly magazines; some were later reworked into full-length novels or plays such as Witness for the Prosecution.
16-20 September: And Then There Were None, Christie’s own stage adaptation of the world’s best-selling mystery with more than 100 million copies sold. Performed by Bill Kenwright’s Agatha Christie Theatre Company at the Princess Theatre, Torquay.
For more details of other events check out Christie Events!