Peter Sheeran - Swigatha: A re-read of Agatha Christie

Swigatha

A re-read of Agatha Christie

By

Peter Sheeran

Note from the author

Swigatha came about as the result of a re-read by me of all the books by Agatha Christie that I had first encountered as a child. These books were all in paperback editions, published by Fontana and Pan in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s, and most of them were second-hand.

Swigatha contains a review in chronological order of each book, including a brief look at the plot, then the characters and the attitudes of the characters at the time, supported by many quotations from the text. Each one is given a totally subjective Swigatha rating, a what-happened-next item and a few notes about some of the on-screen adaptations. It Is designed to be either read In sequence or dipped into, with the result that some background autobiographical details that are relevant to more than one story are repeated.

The review also considers the actual book itself: its front and back covers, its condition and so on. It was a thrill to encounter these books in the versions I had read; some, like the stories within them, have withstood the test of time better than others, but the re-read was for the most part an absolute joy.

The original reviews were first posted on to the Swigatha website; the various 2020/21 lockdowns in the UK gave the opportunity to edit each of them and compile them in book form.

Peter Sheeran

'SPOILER' ALERT

Inevitably some of the reviews may Indicate quite strongly the Identity of some of the culprits. In such cases a warning has been posted.

CREDITS:

The front cover image is taken from the cover of the 1967 Fontana paperback edition of The Mirror Crackd from Side to Side (artist Tom Adams).

Cover Design: Laura Ingham Proof reader: Anna Haldane Photos: Peter Sheeran

Copyright Peter Sheeran 2021. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781914288166 (e-book)

Contents

Introduction

You dont read a book, you re-read it. Vladimir Nabokov

WHY SWIGATHA

Swigatha is short for Swigatha Whiskey, a play on the name of Agatha Christie dreamed up by my older brother Bill when he was 13 and I was 11. We were avidly devouring second-hand 1960s paperback detective fiction at the time, and if anyone in the family came across a book by Agatha Christie that we had not seen before they would swoop on it, announcing to the world that they had found a new swigatha. By the time the author died, when I was 20, we had the full set, and had read the lot.

THE BOOKS

It was not just the stories, some of which are magnificent, that attracted us, but also the actual books themselves: the front covers, the blurb on the back, the pages, the print and the also available ... pages at the back.

Researching other people's first experiences of Agatha Christie, especially fan pages dedicated to her on Facebook, I have found that 11 is about the median age when people started reading her. It is noticeable the fondness and pride people have for the covers of the books they first read.

RE-READING AGATHA CHRISTIE

I began re-reading Agatha Christie in 2016. It has taken a long time, in part because many of our original copies had disappeared, to track down other copies of the original editions. When I see these editions in a second hand bookshop I feel such a delight of recognition. I do not think I would have reacted to these stories in quite the same way when re-reading them if they had been more modern versions.

I was not surprised to find that some of the books that had thrilled me at the age of 11, such as The Big Four, left me cold as an adult; however the reverse also applied: for example, Five Little Pigs, which had left little impression on the child, was revealed to be a masterpiece of its ilk to the man.

I re-read the detective fiction in chronological order, and began noting down quotes from the text that seemed, on the surface, to reflect attitudes of the era in which the books were set. Some downright racist comments, as casually expressed in the stories from the period after the end of the First World War, are difficult to read when coming from the pen of a favourite writer, but I jotted them down nevertheless. Although these were increasingly toned down, especially after the end of the Second World War, I maintained my lists of them: one for each decade of her writing career (1916-1973).

Many modern-day readers would defend the author against charges of racism or anti-semitism by stating that the offensive language used was how people spoke at the time. I am not sure this is necessary.

When looking at these quotes in total, one thing leaps to the eye: such comments are never made by any of her narrators or two main characters - Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. In (almost) every case they are there either to illustrate an aspect of a subsidiary character or mock insular attitudes, rather than being the voice of the author.

The re-read was beginning to become a study.

OF ITS TIME

Most novels, whether intentionally or not, reflect the time and place when they are written. This is certainly true of Agatha Christies work; the wallpaper of her stories depicts many elements of the ongoing social history of Britain in the middle years of the 20th Century.

So, for the 1920s we have stories featuring an establishment disturbed by the huge levels of social unrest that were a feature of the post WW1 years, with world-domination conspiracy theories rife. We also have what still resemble pre-war country houses, with full complements of servants, their house parties repeatedly mixed up in murder; caught between the two we have a series of plucky young heroines trying to make their way in the world, the first generation of their ilk to have to do so: the Bright Young Things.

By the 1930s the bright lights have begun to dim. The world is in recession, the old families are selling up and the houses are being bought by politicians, actors, soap kings and business magnates; the people of Jarrow are on the march. Miss Marples home village of St Mary Mead is relatively unchanged, but Poirot spends much of the decade abroad, following his creator on her travels via the Orient Express to North Africa and the Middle East and the various outposts of the British Empire still dotted around them.

The tales from the 1940s are less frivolous than those that came before, unsurprisingly since many were written in London during wartime. Only one is specifically set in wartime (N or M?), but the theme of totalitarianism is raised in One Two Buckle My Shoe and the problem of the returning wartime hero features in Taken at the Flood (and is later alluded to in A Murder is Announced).

Post-war developments in the UK, such as the decline of the Empire and the colonials return, the provision of free education for all (and its impact on the servant problem), food rationing, the introduction of the Welfare State and a National Health Service, play a huge background role in the stories set in the 1950s.

Come the 1960s, Miss Marples previously unchanging village of St Mary Mead has become overlooked by a modern estate known as The Development, her neighbour Dolly Bantrys Gossington Hall has been bought by film star Marina Gregg, and The Beatles, Teddy Boys, the Chelsea Arts Set and psychedelic drugs are all being name-checked. One of the stories is even based on the Great Train Robbery of 1963.