Dear old Agatha Christie, the 'queen of crime' died today in 1976. I held a moment's silence in the Staff Room at the time but it was marred by some idiot (I think the Deputy Head) shouting 'The Mousetrap - the policeman did it!'
Can we just clear up her famous 'missing weekend' in 1926. She appeared in a hotel in Harrogate with no recollection of where she'd been. I've been to Harrogate on many occasions and it has happened to me every time. And anyway, the 'queen of crime' is clearly Mrs Detective Inspector Jacquie Carpenter-Maxwell, although to be honest if she wants to become a household name I think she needs to make it something that trips off the tongue with a little more alacrity.
In other news ...
Jack London was born today in 1876 (exactly a century before Agatha died - spooky, or what?). I've always had a soft spot for Jack. He not only captured the great outdoor of Canada and the US brilliantly in White Fang and Call of the Wild, his People of the Abyss about the Whitechapel ghetto a few years after Jack the Ripper, has never been bettered. Nobody wrote about London like London.
