Lessons From A Gigantic Leg

If you’ve bought or borrowed a copy of my latest book, A Hundred Thousand Dragons, then, apart from earning my grateful thanks, you’ll know that printed in the front is the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley.  Now, without giving too much away, the poem is there for a purpose.  I mean, it comes into the story. It’s far too much sweat for the Avid Reader to go chasing off after random pieces of poetry when reading a detective story, so I thought I’d print it in the front so, if moved to do so, the A.R. can simply flick to the front of the book.  It’s not just lugged in to give Dragons a bit of class, although I’ll have any bits of free class that are going! Just making life easier, don’t you know.  Always willing to please. All part of the service.



Ozymandias has always been a real favourite of mine.  It’s all mysterious and ancient and Egyptian in a sphinxandpyramidsandmummies sort of way, the spiritual precursor of all those hoaky old films where, having not troubled the general populace for millennia, the first thing any self-respecting mummy does on being dug up is wander around, inflicting grief on all in its path.  I can imagine the Poet Shelley punching the air, fighting off Coleridge, tripping up his mate Bryon and yelling, “Dibs on the old statue!” as he raced for his pen and muse.  Incidentally, The Poet Shelley is a phrase that cracks me up.  Jeeves often refers to The Poet Shelley as he attempts to broaden Bertie Wooster’s education.  On one occasion, Bertie, when closeted with the appallingly soppy Madeline Basset, says to her (he’s got the phrase from Jeeves) that his pal, Gussie, is “A sensitive plant”.  Madeline blinks at him and says, “You know your Shelley, Bertie.”  To which Bertie replies, “Oh? Am I?”

Anyway, back to Ozymandias.  You’d think, wouldn’t you, that with a theme as strong as that, you couldn’t go wrong.  The Poet Shelley certainly doesn’t.  Here’s his first few lines:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Magic!  But…  my pal Jane Finnis told me there was another poem called Ozymandias. This one’s by a bloke called Horace Smith. Smith was a friend of Shelley’s who had written his poem in competition with Shelley. It was published in the same magazine as Percy’s a month later.  And you can’t help thinking he was ill-advised. The title makes you think a bit, for a start: On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below.

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg

I don’t know why, but legs are funny.  A Farewell to Arms?  Yup.  A Farewell to Legs?  I don’t think so.  Particularly as this particular Leg seems to double as a sun-dial:  the Leg (Horace is responsible for the capitals, not me)

which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:

And so the next line, the punch-line, lacks a bit:
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand." The City's gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

To be fair to Horace, the second bit, where he looks forward to a science-fictiony post-apocalyptic London is all right:
We wonder, and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place

However, that’s rather taken us away from his Leg.  It’s a shame, but it’s true.  It’s not enough to have a brilliant story.  You’ve got to tell it right, too.

Take down more flags

Well, I’m depressed.  Good grief, the footy was awful.  We (me, Peter, Lucy and Dad) went up to the local pub to watch Ing-ger-land.  The sun was shining, the sky was blue etcetera, etcetera, the beer (Black Sheep) was good.  There was a big tent in the pub garden with a barbeque and, off to one side, a garden with swings for the children.  The place was packed and, despite all that had gone before, the atmosphere was terrific.  Oh dear.

It wasn’t that we were fighting the war all over again, which is always the grim possibility when playing Germany, it was that we weren’t fighting at all.  The atmosphere in the pub, which had been great at the beginning, got quieter and quieter as the dire display went on.  It was an honest relief when the full time whistle went and we could all pack up and go home.  So it’s down with all the flags and bunting that have decorated the houses and cars and back to watching other people play.

Arrrgh!  I’d really love to win the World Cup, if for no other reason than to stop people on the telly going on and on about 1966.  I mean, it’s so long ago, it’s embarrassing to have it constantly served up as the reminder of the last time (the only time) when Ing-ger-land managed to do it.  Still, it could (just) be worse;  we could be French; or Italian.  Or, for that matter, South Africa, who, having invited the world to their party, have to sit and watch it from the sidelines.

This isn’t any sort of excuse, but why on earth was there any doubt about Frank Lampard’s goal? Dammit, goals have been like hen's teeth in our matches so far.  We can't allow perfectly good ones to go AWOL like that.  And, just to drive the point home, in the Mexico-Argy match later on, the ref allowed the Argies a goal that clearly wasn’t.  In every other sport I can think of, there’s something called Technology. Why is it that football, which has millions pumped into it, hasn’t caught up?  Wimbledon has Hawkeye, cricket has a magic eye and rugby has the video ref.  It stops the ref looking like an idiot and puts the officials in the same boat as the millions watching on TV.  However, even if the Ing-ger-land squad had been replaced by a team of cybermen, it wouldn’t have made any difference in the end.

Talking of cybermen, I’m not half enjoying this latest series of Doctor Who.  The scripts are great, full of time-trickery and puzzles and the series finale was terrific.  Maybe we should get the Doctor on the football team.

The puzzle in the priory

I’ve had a right old “booky” week this week.  It started off with a really enjoyable afternoon on Monday when my pal, Jane Finnis, emerged from her Yorkshire lair, crossed the Pennines to the broad, sunlit uplands of Greater Manchester and joined me in a double-handed talk in Dukinfield library.  There was a really good turn-out and a very lively discussion.  Jane writes mysteries set in Roman Yorkshire (I know, I know – there wasn’t such an entity as Yorkshire in Roman times and Jane, a purist, winces every time I say it, but you know what I mean!) and I write about the 1920’s.  That’s a pretty wide historical span which the audience seemed to thoroughly enjoy talking about.  What have the Romans ever done for us? asked Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Given us lots to talk about, that’s what!

The second “booky” event was a party on Saturday evening to celebrate A Hundred Thousand Dragons coming out. It took place at the Priory, the local tennis club (Dad’s been a member of the club since 1940-something!) and it was a great evening.  The weather was perfect and the clubhouse, which had been looking at little bit down-at-heel, had been freshly decorated. They’d had a flood a couple of months ago which wrecked the floor; gloom.  The insurance kicked in; rejoice!

Daughter Helen and I had spent the previous couple of weeks thinking about suitable games for the evening.  It’s not really a “dancing” do but we did feel people needed something.  So we got eight different detective-story covers, including old favourites such as Paul Temple, Sexton Blake and Sherlock Holmes, made them into jigsaws and gave each table a jigsaw puzzle to solve.  The “game” element came from the fact that Helen and myself had mixed up all the pieces, so that everyone had to hunt their particular pieces off the other tables.  Quote of the night was Rob White saying, in a determined Scottish way to his neighbours as he nabbed a jigsaw piece of Death On The Nile, “That’s my camel!”

Peter wondered what to wear and plumped for a very smart blazer and flannels.  He read an extract from the first chapter, which takes place in Claridges, and gosh, did he look the part!

I can’t reproduce jigsaw puzzles (a computer screen is really awkward to cut up into bits!)  but we did have another game.  Helen put together the Jack Haldean (clue!) Detective Codeword.  Here it is, if you’d like to have a go.

The Jack Haldean Detective Codeword!

				12
11	23	17	9	6	16	20	5	13	16	2	5		19	23	16	2	11
				16										6		14
				23			12							15		25
	1	16	23	10	21	16	6	5	14	16	20			14		17
				3			17			26						6
				16		22	17	2	4	14	2	13		25		25
				18			5							18		14
	4	16	6	6	17	8	11		9	21	2	18	6	6	14	2
			13				9			17				6
10		3	18	11	11	3	16	2	7	6	14			16		3
18			20				18			3		7	17	18	11	17	20
5	16	4	4	14	2		20			14				20		9
20										11		4				18
16	23	24	15	18	9	9	16	6				15				25
7												20	17	17	11	14

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26

How to play:

Solve the codeword by filling the letters in with the corresponding numbers, and using the clues to work out what the words are.

All the words have a murder mystery theme – three of them are detectives, and five of them are weapons! Good luck…

Here's some clues to get you going.  Letter 1 is J, 4=G, 6=L, 12=B and 19=Z. (It's the name of an old police series, but you should be able to get it.)

Hands Across the Pond

As part of Crime Fiction Week, I’m very happy to have a guest today, Donna Fletcher Crow from the USA.  Donna and I have never met, but we came together through the wonders of email, as we answered one another’s messages on DorothyL, the mystery website and became firm, if electronic, friends. Donna has a new book out, the first in the Monastery Murders series, which I can heartily recommend.

My questions are in italics. So, Donna, over to you!

Thank you so much, Dolores, for inviting me here today to celebrate National Crime Fiction Week in the UK.  If I were a much stronger swimmer I could be there speaking in libraries, doing schools visits and holding book signings with English Crime Fiction writers this week. But realities and distances being what they are I’ll just sit here with a freshly brewed cup of my favorite Yorkshire Gold and wave my book at you.  I am truly delighted that Monarch Books has released A Very Private Grave, Book 1 in my Monastery Murders series, in time for Crime Fiction Week, so I truly feel like I’m celebrating with you.  I’ve been asking my UK readers to go into their nearest Waterstones and ask to see it.  Even if they aren’t going to buy it, it will help create interest.  And asking libraries to buy a book is also a great way to help authors you enjoy.

Donna, can you tell us a little about yourself? For instance, although A VERY PRIVATE GRAVE is a new venture, it’s not your first book, is it?

I’ve been writing all my life and publishing for about 35 years.  Coincidentally, in that time I have published about 35 books.  Most of them are novels dealing with English history in some way. One of my favorites is Glastonbury, The Novel of Christian England.  It’s a grail search epic that covers 1500 years of English history.  Lots of scope there for a history-lover.

One aspect of A VERY PRIVATE GRAVE that I particularly like is the observation of England. There’s a very strong sense of “place”. What appeals to you about England as a setting?

Oh, my goodness.  There isn’t much that doesn’t appeal to me.  I even like the rain.  I’ve often been asked  “why England?”  My instinct is to reply “What else is there?”  But that’s not particularly helpful. It’s just that I never wanted to write about anything else and even when I’m doing something like my Daughters of Courage series which is about Idaho pioneer families, using a lot of my own grandmothers’ stories, I still manage to get in our Scottish Fletcher the Warrior family stories and the story of my great, great grandmother who came to America when the textile mill she was running in Ireland burnt down.  So I guess it’s a roots thing.  And now our daughter is married to an Englishman, so we’ve come full circle.

Felicity Howard, the main character in A VERY PRIVATE GRAVE, is a young American living in Britain who is studying to be an Anglican minister. Felicity seems very “real”. Did you base her on anyone specific or did she just grow in your mind as you were writing the book?

Oh, yes, Felicity is very much based on our daughter Elizabeth.  Their backgrounds are just about identical.  But then it didn’t work very well at all using Elizabeth’s personality, so Felicity got to be very much her own person and is lots more fun to work with that way.  I will just say, though, that when Elizabeth emigrated and I was moaning about missing her I got no sympathy from my friends who would look at me and say, “Well, whose fault is it?”  Since I had taken her on research trips with me since she was 5 years old.

The first part of the action of A VERY PRIVATE GRAVE concerns a fairly brutal murder at the Anglican College of the Transfiguration in Yorkshire. Like Felicity, the centre seems very “real”. Is it based on a particular place? I feel sure there’s a story behind the story!

Dolores, you’re a very sharp reader.  Oh, yes, the College and Community of the Transfiguration is very heavily drawn from The College and Community of the Resurrection in Mirfield where, indeed, Elizabeth did study theology and wound up marrying a C of E priest.  I am a Companion of the Community.  I would be an oblate, but for CR one has to be a celibate male to be an oblate, so I didn’t exactly qualify.  I go there on retreats whenever I’m on your side of the Water.

A VERY PRIVATE GRAVE centres round the 5^th century saint, St Cuthbert, and the extraordinary account of what happened to his body after he died. Have you always been interested in St Cuthbert or was it an interest which arose as you were researching the book?

I first heard of St. Cuthbert when visiting Durham Cathedral in the mid-90’s.  I knew then I wanted to know more.  I got my chance when I took my own pilgrimage in the fall of 2001— actually taking one of the first planes to leave Boise after 9/11.  I visited 17 holy sites in England, Scotland and Wales and really got St. Cuthbert’s story as well as many others which I hope to tell in future Monastery Murders.

Following on from that question, there’s frequent flashbacks to the 600’s in the story. The detail is terrific! How did you go about re-creating that world?

Oh, thank you.  Other readers have mentioned liking those sections, too.  I was very worried about them because they move the reader away from the intensity of the thriller action, but I’m so glad they worked for you.  Maybe readers need a respite from the blood and mayhem.  But then, the Viking attacks and all that Cuthbert experienced weren’t exactly placid, either.  The detail, of course, is based on my being there and then trying to put my reader in the scene as well.

The action of A VERY PRIVATE GRAVE takes place in Northumberland and Cumberland with occasional excursions to the Scottish Borders. The area is very well-described with occasional references to how cold it is! Can you tell us what made you choose to set A VERY PRIVATE GRAVE here?

Once I’d chosen to tell Cuthbert’s story, I just had to follow along wherever he went.  I think that’s one reason I like writing history.  So much of it I don’t have to make up at all and I always feel that the real bits are the best.  Then I try to make the fictional parts seem real.

Although A VERY PRIVATE GRAVE is complete in itself, there’s obviously more to be written about Felicity! Can you give us some idea of how you see the series developing?

Well, obviously Felicity has a lot of sorting out and, I suppose, growing up to do.  She starts out thinking she knows everything and ends up realizing she doesn’t know anything and Antony tells her “I can’t think of a better place to start.”  But then, being Felicity, she never does anything by halves.  If you read the first chapter of A Darkly Hidden Truth, included in the back of private Grave, you’ll see that, having discovered that there is validity to a spiritual life, Felicity has decided to become a nun.  I think growing Felicity up will be lots of fun.

Sherlock Holmes and The Purloined Letter.

It is with a heavy heart I pick up my pen… You know, that’s such a good opening.  One of these days I’ll find a story to go with it.  It was in the summer of ’94, give ten or twelve years either side, and I was busy updating my website, www.mymatesbrighterthanme.com which title, for some reason, seems to afford Holmes vast amusement.

I was wearing my decorations.  No, I don’t mean medals. I have said before that the relationship between Holmes and myself was peculiar.  I even complained to him that he seemed think I was simply part of the furniture. However, I do think he’d taken his abstraction a little far when, in an idle moment, he scrubbed me down with wire-wool and sugar soap,  painted a fetching pattern of interlinked handcuffs all over me, topped it off with a coat of varnish and balanced a vase of chrysanthemums on my head.  I was distinctly worried when I found him with a book of fabric samples, yards of foam rubber, some nails and an upholstery hammer.

I was saved being transformed into a sofa, an ottoman or an armchair, however, by the entry of Mrs Hudson, our worthy housekeeper, into the room.  “Mr Holmes!” she said in ringing tones.  “I appeal to you!”

“Not a lot,” he said, knocking his pipe out carelessly on one of my surfaces.

“I have with me,” she continued, ignoring the fire that had broken out along my varnished exterior, “the most unhappy wretch that ever walked the Earth!”

She flung back the door and admitted a hideous hunchbacked creature.  Human, yes, but only just.  Its knuckles dragged along the floor and its eyes gleamed with a ghastly, malefic intelligence.  That there was some human feeling there however, I could not doubt, as it sprang for the fire extinguisher and played it about my surface.  Wiping the foam from my eyes, I could not resist a shudder as I looked at the vile abomination before us.

Holmes started to his feet, horror clearly etched on his finely-chiselled features.  “Mrs Hudson!  You know I abhor clichés.  I only deal with the bizarre, the fantastic, the recherché, the upper crust of crime, and yet you bring me A Fiend In Human Shape.  Any mere Inspector Lestrade could deal with a Fiend!  Take it to Scotland Yard at once!”

The Fiend burst into tears.  “Yes, yes, I admit it!  I am doomed to walk the earth as an out-worn plot device!  Forced to Lurk, to Loom, to be classed with a mere Hideous Thing or Mysterious Horror!  Forced never to finish a sentence without an exclamation mark!  And yet it was not always so! It began with a Purloined Letter!”

“Another cliché,” said Holmes, curling his finely chiselled lip.  (I must watch Holmes and that chisel; any moment now and he’ll think I’d look better as a chest-of-drawers.) “And that, I may add, by Edgar Allan Poe, a most inferior author.”

“Yes! Yes! Your words cut me to the quick!  And yet, Mr Holmes, could I but find the Purloined Letter, I would know happiness once more!”

“Have you looked under the bed?” I asked.  “That’s where I’d expect to find a Poe.”  Everyone ignored me, of course.  They always do, especially when I crack very old jokes. “Poe,” I explained.  “It’s another word for chamber-pot.  The guzunder, you know?  Because it guzunder the bed.”  Mrs Hudson carelessly rearranged my chrysanthemums, flung a lace table-cloth over my head and I was forced into silence.

The Fiend cast itself upon its knees and raised its hands in an imploring gesture. “Upon that Letter, Mr Holmes rests all my hopes!  Oh, if I could but find it!”

“It’s on the mantelpiece,” I said through the lace.  Everyone ignored me once more.  “In Edgar Allan Poe’s story, the Letter was on the mantelpiece.  Look on the mantelpiece.”

“I have searched high and low!” said the Fiend.  “If I could but find a clue!”

“Why not look on the mantelpiece, Mr Holmes?” asked Mrs Hudson.  “You’ve got some letters there.”

Holmes crossed to the mantelpiece.  He frequently amused himself by shooting a V.R. out of the wall and he displayed his best efforts under a portrait of Our Dear Queen, Victoria, as a humble patriotic gesture that should inflame the hearts of all Englishmen.  He picked up a handful of R’s and threw them to Mrs Hudson. She missed them, of course.

“Mrs Hudson,” said Holmes in quiet reproof.  “You’ve rolled your R’s.”

“I can’t help it.  It’s just the way I walk.”

“Give one to the Fiend,” he instructed curtly.

She stooped down – and Holmes was right, she did roll her - well, never mind. She picked up a letter and gave it to the Fiend.

The Fiend clasped the letter to its bosom and a remarkable transformation at once took place.

There was the sound of heavenly saxophone music (Baker Street, I believe) and what had once been the Fiend straightened up and became a handsome young fellow, just like the end of Beauty and The Beast, where I pinched this scene from.

“Hideous no longer,” muttered the erstwhile Fiend.  “How can I ever thank you, Mr Holmes? It’s such a relief to use question marks and have some variety in my punctuation. That one letter has made all the difference.  Now I’ve got my Purloined Letter back, I’m now longer a Fiend but a Friend in Human Shape.”

Jessica's passed her driving test

My daughter Jessica has passed her driving test.

Thank God.  It’s bad enough living with various daughters in the throes of GCSE’s and AS levels, to say nothing of first year University exams (although Elspeth, the student in question has confined her fits of the wobblies to the other end of a telephone from Glasgow) without the added strain of a driving test-ee muttering stopping distances at you.  Not only that, but there’s been the additional odd white-knuckle moment as I’ve sat in the car with her and practiced roundabouts.  She’s pretty good, actually, and it could all be so much worse.  White Van men, taxi drivers, and teenage boys with sound systems as big as the engine have to be the scariest drivers with elderly men in hats a close second.  Driving, as a fine art, obviously goes back further than you’d think. The first recorded road-hog in history crops up in the Bible;  “The driving is like the driving of Jehu, the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously,” says the book of Chronicles, but it doesn’t say if Jehu had a sound-system or wore a hat.   Maybe he had a party of harpists and tambourine-bashers in the back playing Heavy Psalms.  Rock of Ages, perhaps?

Anyway, there’s now another car parked outside the Gordon-Smith household, a neat little silver Ford Fiesta, paid for, taxed, insured, complete with radio and a dinky little key to turn off the alarm. It’s been admired, cooed over and exhibited to anyone showing the remotest interest.  Result.

The Ford Fiesta, however, wasn’t the first thing on my mind during the thunderstorm that enlivened Manchester during the week.  Instead the dog, Lucky, occupied my thoughts completely.  I’ve mentioned Lucky before.  He’s a Heinz 57 of a dog, with Staffordshire Bull Terrier predominating and wormed his way into my affections when I saw him in the dog rescue home by having an ingratiating manner and three legs.  A three legged dog called Lucky?  Wow.

Lucky doesn’t like thunderstorms.  Goodness knows what’s going on between the animal’s ears, but it’s as if the rest of the house doesn’t know there’s a thunderstorm in progress and he thinks we ought to be aware.  So, come four o’clock in the morning or thereabouts, I heard a wuff, wuff, WUFF!

It’s not an aggressive Wuff.  It’s not a wuff that says, “I say, people, there’s a bloke with a black mask and a bag marked “Swag” just come through the window,” wuff.  It’s a I-don’t-like-it Wuff.  It’s a would-you-mind-coming-and-sorting-this-out-for-me? wuff.  It’s a polite sort of Wuff, if you know what I mean and he can keep it up for hours.  I lay in bed, as you do, trying to convince myself it would all go away eventually.  Beside me, the partner of my joys and sorrows slumbered on. Roll of thunder:  wuff, wuff, WUFF!  It’ll stop soon.  Roll of thunder:  wuff, wuff, WUFF!  It has to stop soon. Roll of thunder:  wuff, wuff, WUFF!  It really, really, has to stop soon. Roll of thunder:  wuff, wuff, WUFF!  Oh, sod it, the damn dog’s not going to shut up unless I accept his invitation to do something about it.  Now, before anyone thinks I have a Canute-type complex and believe one word from me will quell storms, no I don’t, but I can stress at a dog with the best of them.  So, up I got, went downstairs, pointed out to Lucky the error of his ways, and, with the rain hammering down on the conservatory roof, held up as examples Snooker the cat (asleep) Arthur the cat (aloof and superior) Minou, the small cat, (puzzled at this four o’clock excursion and hopeful of food) and, most tellingly, Barney the dog, unruffled by thunder. Wuff? suggested Lucky as I made for bed once more.  Don’t try it, I said cuttingly and the animal fell silent.

Thank God for that, I thought, as I snuggled between the sheets once more.  The rain continued to hammer, the thunder to roll, but the dog remained silent.  And then a car alarm went off.  Well, at all events it was nothing to do with me. Our car, I thought smugly, drifting off, hasn’t got an alarm.  And then the hideous truth smote me.  Jessica’s passed her driving test. There’s a neat little silver Ford Fiesta parked outside...

The Man Who Thought He Might Have Killed Agatha Christie

It’s rum to think it was only last weekend us crime-ficcies were living it up at the Bristol Crimefest. It seems a lot longer away.  For one thing, the weather’s changed to intermittent driving rain and cold – just as I was thinking of breaking out the barbie, too.  (Does anyone else, on a historical note, remember that comment of Jasper Carrot’s, referring to the Australian take on life in medieval France?   “Open another tinnie of wine and throw another saint on the Barbie.”)

One of the highlights of the weekend was John Curran, Matthew Pritchard and Marcel Berlins talking about John’s new book, The Secret Notebooks of Agatha Christie. It was a really fascinating conversation.  John Curran has spent ages working through the notes Agatha Christie left as she jotted down ideas for stories.  Her handwriting was pretty hard to read apparently, and the notes weren’t in any particular order, so he’s done some very solid hard work in getting them into an order that a reader can really understand.  I’ve ordered a copy from Amazon and am eagerly awaiting for it to arrive.  Matthew Pritchard is, of course, Agatha Christie’s grandson, and was able to bring some fascinating family insights to bear in response to Marcel Berlins’ intelligent questions.  Marcel Berlins is the former crime reviewer of The Times and a perfect choice to conduct the panel.  One nice little sidelight was in response to the question about Mrs Ariadne Oliver.   Ariadne Oliver is one of Agatha Christie’s best creations.  Agatha Christie wasn’t a “comic” writer as such, but there’s an awful lot of humour in her books and when Mrs Oliver hoves into sight, you know there’s a some light-hearted moments in store.  She can be serious, of course – she’s not a comic turn – but she does find the humour in situations.  It’s always said that Mrs Oliver is Agatha Christie’s pen-portrait of herself, and all three on the panel confirmed that was, indeed, how Agatha Christie saw the agreeable Ariadne Oliver.  Matthew Pritchard, after listening to what the others had to say, threw in another likeness – his grandmother loved apples!  Poirot reflects (in Mrs McGinty’s Dead, I think) that apples and Ariadne Oliver always go together.

One contribution to the discussion came from Yours Truly.  It was apology from a close friend of mine, Terry Thompson, who had met Agatha Christie in circumstances which he never really forgot. (Or got over, either, but you’ll see why in a minute.)  Poor old Terry died some time ago, but this was his story.

He was a young student for the priesthood at the time and was delighted when one of his college friends invited him to a private dinner where Agatha Christie was to be a fellow-guest.  She was very old and found walking difficult, so she got about in what, in her books, she always called “A wheeled chair”.  She asked Terry, who she liked, to take her for a walk in the chair after dinner.  Terry leapt to it, and soon this young student from Birkenhead was pushing one of England’s foremost writers down a fairly steep hill in the grounds of an English country house.  It was a very steep hill; and Terry couldn’t find the brake.  To his horror, the chair started to go faster and faster and pretty soon the chair was rattling down the hill with Terry ineffectively hanging on the back. (Think cartoons here; that gives the right sort of image!)

Well, he more or less knew what was going to happen and it did.  The front wheel of the chair hit a stone and (again, think cartoons) Agatha Christie was precipitated out of her chair, sailed through the air and came to earth in a bush.  Utterly horrified and full of apologies, Terry unpicked her from the foliage.  Dame Agatha, a real lady, didn’t blame him – much.  Terry, with his tail very much between his legs, pushed her up the hill and back to the safety of the dining-table. Agatha Christie, he was sorry to learn, died a few months afterwards, and he always wondered if he was The Man Who Had Killed Agatha Christie.  Such is the unfeeling quality of human nature, that everyone, Dame Agatha’s grandson included, greeted this tale of woe with unseemly mirth!  And, apparently, even Dame Agatha herself laughed.  But afterwards, I imagine.