Agatha Christie
Every line in the new Alan Partridge is perfect
By now, viewers of TV thrillers are no strangers to a baffling prologue – but this week brought a particularly…
Anjelica Huston is comprehensively upstaged in the BBC’s new Agatha Christie
Coincidentally, two of this week’s big new dramas began with a fourth wall-busting declaration of their narrative methods. At the…
Strangeness and charm
The restaurant 2 Fore Street lives on Mousehole harbour, near gift shops: the post office and general store have closed,…
No mucking about
The Pilchard Inn sits at the entrance to Burgh Island, a minute tidal island off the coast of south Devon.…
Serious entertainment
What a weird lot crime writers are. I don’t come to this conclusion lightly, since I’m a crime writer myself,…
The age of innocence
Netflix’s share price has collapsed and a major factor, people are saying, is its relentless pushing of agendas. I think…
Cooking the books
Agatha and Poirot was one of those programmes that had the annoying effect of making you feel distinctly snooty. ITV’s…
The art of the monologue
If you’ve been listening to The Archers lately, you’ll know how tedious monologues can be. The BBC has received so…
The wonder of Wodehouse
Everyone knows a Lord Emsworth. Mine lives south of the river and wears caterpillars in his hair and wine on…
Vol-au-vent horror
Not much was clear in the opening scenes of The Pale Horse (BBC1, Sunday), which even by current TV standards…
A purity test for artists is the end of art
However we keep ourselves amused over the holidays this year, two sources of entertainment are off the docket. Amid the…
The death of cosy Christie
This is not Midsomer Murders. The new film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express is thick with…
Old masters
The Fitzwilliam Museum is marking its bicentenary with an exhibition that takes its title from Agatha Christie: Death on the…
Aleppo Notebook
I had been trying to get to Aleppo for ages, but was unable to do so because rebel activity had…
If the world economy crashes again, blame the central bankers
Like the Christmas pudding sampled by Hercule Poirot at Kings Lacey — but six weeks early — our Spectator Money…
When escape to the sun — or even to Devon — goes horribly wrong
A character in Sophie Hannah’s A Game for All the Family (Hodder, £14.99, pp. 432) presents a theory: ‘Mysteries are…
How cool is Britannia?
Is it true that, having lost an empire, we reinvented ourselves as an island of entertainers? Do we channel the…
Affairs in squares
On all those comic lists of the world’s shortest books (Great Italian War Heroes, My Hunt for the Real Killers,…
No sex, please, in the Detection Club
‘The crime novel,’ said Bertolt Brecht, ‘like the world itself, is ruled by the English.’ He was thinking of the…
The producers
Robert Gore-Langton talks to Duncan Weeldon and Paul Elliott about the good old days – and getting shafted
Murder, motive and moustachery
Robert Gore-Langton on our love for fictional detectives — and especially Poirot
