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Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

03 Apr 09 11:41AM

As some of you may already know, my silence of late on the Website is due to my commitments to things Christiean elsewhere. In short, I am writing a book about Agatha Christie, specifically Agatha Christie and her plotting Notebooks. This is probably the last aspect of Agatha Christie that has not already been discussed in a book. We have had books on her life, her literary output, her husband, her disappearance; we have bought quiz books, travel books, film books, Mousetrap books; books about her poisons, her characters, her cover designs, her garden; biographies of Poirot and Miss Marple. My contribution to Christie scholarship has been undertaken with not just the blessing of her grandson, Mathew Prichard, but his active encouragement and practical help. I have been a guest in his home so often of late, that I now have my own room! I am very grateful to him and his wife, Lucy. And I am delighted that Harper Collins, Agatha Christie’s publishers for most of her working life, showed such instant interest in the book when I first suggested it. They plan to publish it in September 2009.

Over the next year I intend writing an occasional blog (when time allows!) to keep readers of this website informed of progress. As the months pass I will give you a few sneak previews into a work-in-progress and a peek into the incomparable literary legacy that is The Notebooks of Agatha Christie.

Die-hard fans have known of the existence of the Agatha Christie Notebooks for some years. Both Janet Morgan and Laura Thompson mentioned them in their biographies. And at the time of the publication of the Morgan volume, in 1984, I well remember a book programme on BBC2 where she discussed the Notebooks; and there were brief shots of them as she spoke outside Greenway House.

Agatha Christie herself mentions them in her Autobiography where she explains that she often had a few of Notebooks at any given time and would write randomly in them; this presented her with the problem of making sense of them at a later stage when she eventually returned to them looking for her bright idea. They were carefully stored by Rosalind Hicks since her mother’s death and now form part of the Christie Archive. Few people, apart from Janet Morgan and Laura Thompson, both official biographers, have been granted access to them.  When I first saw them in November 2005, at the invitation of Mathew Prichard, they were in a cardboard box in a room resembling Aladdin’s Cave upstairs in Greenway House, a room packed with Dame Agatha’s papers, manuscripts, letters, contracts, fan-mail, first editions – and Notebooks. In the course of one weekend I spent 23 hours poring over them. And have spent 100s of further hours with them ever since. They still fascinate me, and I hope that, through my book, they will fascinate you, too!

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6 comments

14gchristie 29 Jan 11 at 11:16p.m.

i have recently sent an email to Mr. Curran. asking if there was any way the notebooks could be published in their own right, or perhaos be scanned so that they are available to the public. I think that these notebooks are treasures that the ublic SHOUlD have access too. I hope he considers my request!

lourenco 15 Sep 09 at 4:53p.m.

I just can't wait to read it!! Do you know if the book will be translated into portuguese?

mysteriosa 21 Aug 09 at 11:30a.m.

can't wait to read the book... can the public view her notebooks, too? is there a documentary film about these notebooks?

JBurgher 29 May 09 at 5:19a.m.

Oh I can't wait!!! :)

Liberty1976 07 May 09 at 12:44a.m.

Agatha Christie's trademark, in my opinion, is that she has great plots. I'm surprised these notebooks have not been published in their own right.

GKCfan 08 Apr 09 at 7:08p.m.

Wow! I can't wait to read your book! Can you give a little example of something interesting you found in the notebooks?