Latest news with #Agatha
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez on how the ‘Agatha All Along' cast ‘became a coven' when recording ‘The Ballad of the Witches' Road'
When it came to Agatha All Along , it was the songwriters who may have cast the most tantalizing spell. "The crew was telling us, 'I don't usually say this to songwriters, but wow, I had hairs standing up on the back of my neck,'" Robert Lopez says of the reactions to the cast recording the show's haunting song "The Ballad of the Witches' Road." As the double-EGOT winner's multiple award-winning partner and spouse Kristen Anderson-Lopez tells Gold Derby, "When Agatha got a spin-off, [creator Jac Schaeffer] knew instantly that she wanted it to be based around a song, and built it into the very fundamental architecture of the show, which was a huge gift to us. We would work with her for the rest of our career if we could, because she understands music and it gave us this chance to do this thing that we love." (Watch our full interview above.) More from GoldDerby 'Difficult times,' 'screaming matches,' and 'abandonment': David Duchovny and Chris Carter rehash their drama on 'The X-Files' Emma D'Arcy takes a break from filming 'House of the Dragon' Season 3 to talk riding dragons, 'Westerosi jet lag,' and Season 2's 'momentous' moments Jason Schwartzman on the breakneck 'Mountainhead' production: 'I've never done anything like it in my life' Marvel's Agatha All Along, a follow-up to the Emmy-winning WandaVision, follows Agatha Harkness (Emmy nominee Kathryn Hahn), as she regains her freedom and embarks on the Witches' Road to reclaim her powers. The main cast features Joe Locke as Billy Maximoff, Sasheer Zamata as Jennifer Kale, Ali Ahn as Alice Wu-Gulliver, Tony winner Patti LuPone as Lilia Calderu, Emmy nominee Aubrey Plaza as Rio Vidal, and Debra Jo Rupp reprising her role as Sharon Davis. Drawing inspiration from witch lore and pop culture, the series blends dark comedy with supernatural elements, exploring themes of identity, power, and redemption. SEE Kathryn Hahn reveals the unusual way she learned about her Golden Globe nom for 'Agatha All Along' 'The Ballad of the Witches' Road' is a central musical and narrative element in Agatha All Along, composed by the acclaimed duo behind the Emmy-winning 'Agatha All Along' tune from WandaVision and the iconic Oscar-winning anthem "Let It Go" from Frozen. The song is framed as having been originally created in the 1750s by Agatha Harkness and her son, Nicholas Scratch, used to lure unsuspecting witches into a trap where Agatha would absorb their powers. Throughout the series, the song appears in various versions — including the haunting 'Sacred Chant,' a '70s rock-inspired rendition, and a pop cover by Japanese Breakfast — each reflecting different facets of the show's themes and character arcs. The lyrics serve as both a literal guide and a metaphorical warning, symbolizing the dangers of the Witches' Road and the personal trials that each of the characters endure throughout the first season's nine episodes. " If you heard the demo of this song, it's a lot less powerful; it's a lot more choral," Robert Lopez says. "We thought, they'll be singing in a group and I don't know what this is going to be like, but here's an arrangement of it. We laid down each one of these incredible performers who are also at this very moment bonding with one another. They hadn't really gotten to work yet. This was the first thing they did, and they became a coven, track by track," he explains. "It was one of the first things they all did together; we had to record the sacred version before many of them had even stepped on set to act," Kristen Anderson-Lopez reveals. "The beautiful thing that happened that day is that everybody stayed for each other's. We had to record them one by one in layers, and everyone stayed to support each other. Then a week later they were on screen, on set in their iconic costumes, recording it together. And by that point, they had become an a capella group. They could sing it without backup. They had 'in ears,' but they didn't really need them," she says. "When each person had their closeup and had to do their own solo version, after each one, everybody applauded in the most wonderful, supportive way. It really was this meta thing where the coven was created through this sisterhood song." "The Ballad of the Witches' Road" might end up being yet another feather in the duo's cap, now that Lopez is a double EGOT-winner and Anderson-Lopez is this close to achieving EGOT status. They both have won two Oscars (2013 for "Let It Go' and 2017 for 'Remember Me' from Coco) and were nominated in 2019 for 'Into the Unknown' from Frozen 2. They both won an Emmy in 2021 for 'Agatha All Along' from WandaVision, Lopez won a Grammy for The Book of Mormon and they both won Grammys for "Let it Go" and Frozen, and Lopez has three Tony wins to his name (Avenue Q in 2004 and The Book of Mormon in 2011). When Lopez completed his EGOT in 2014 with Oscar win for "Let it Go," he became the youngest ever to achieve the feat (he was 39), the fastest to achieve it (10 years), and eventually he became the first to win all four of those coveted awards multiple times. "First of all, it is a huge honor. To be recognized for anything, it's a huge honor and I do think that the first Tony that I won for Avenue Q made my whole career possible. I think awards really do make your dreams come true for more than one project. Having that award allows you to get to do all the things you wanted to do or do many of them. And I think that our Oscar for 'Let It Go,' that created Kristen's career," he says of his wife, who is just a Tony shy of completing the EGOT herself. "Winning an Oscar for 'Let It Go' gave me an in with the theater world, which at the time was so male dominated," Anderson-Lopez explains. "There were very few seasons that ever had a female songwriter in the running. So I needed fuel to be able to open doors here in New York," she notes, adding with a playful smile that "when it comes to Bobby being the youngest and the only double EGOT winner, I like to use it to make fun of him sometimes, like when he does something particularly stupid, and I'm like, 'No, no, don't listen to the youngest double EGOT winner.'" Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+. SIGN UP for Gold Derby's free newsletter with latest predictions Best of GoldDerby Jacob Elordi reveals personal reason for joining 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North': 'It was something important to me' Jason Schwartzman on the breakneck 'Mountainhead' production: 'I've never done anything like it in my life' 'Étoile' creators say cinematographer M. David Mullen was their 'film school' Click here to read the full article.
Irish Independent
17-05-2025
- Science
- Irish Independent
‘We knew these girls had something special' – Teenage robotics team from Co Offaly make history with their robot Agatha
The students from Sacred Heart Secondary School in Tullamore, who are aged between 12 and 14, arrived home from Dallas, Texas early this morning, where they represented Ireland at the world championships, the first all-female robotics team to do so. The 'Steminists' – Jasmine Matsushita (13), Emily Thunder (13), Olivia Hoey (14), Rachel Ebenezer (13) and Alice Duffy (12) – have become robotics champions in less than a year with their powerhouse robot, Agatha Trunchbull. Their robot, who was named after the formidable principal from Matilda, was the result of seven months of relentless work by the team. "We knew these girls had something special,' said their teacher Aisling Bourke, who supported the team throughout the year alongside her colleague Sindy Meleady. Agatha is programmed to compete in challenges and matches against other robots, with the team earning the opportunity to head to Texas this week. "They're the highest achieving Irish team, to bring home the judges award – and it's the first all-girls team to go. We're very excited for them, they were brilliant,' said Ms Bourke. She said the girls were the 'driving force' behind the work, bringing Agatha home with them after school some evenings to work on the design or the composition of the robot. "Emily, who was in charge of the coding, used to only be able to run the code at nighttime when her younger brother and sisters were in bed,' said Ms Bourke. "They used to carry the robot from the school to their house – they've convinced me now that we need a trolley.' The girls would also work during weekends and midterms to get their robot to the highest standard they could. ADVERTISEMENT Jasmine was the team's lead builder, who worked on making sure the robot was solid and competition ready, while Emily, the team's programmer was responsible for writing and refining the robot's code. Olivia led on the design of the robot, with Rachel playing a key role in the research and strategising and Alice supporting the engineering process as a builder while also focusing on game analysis. Speaking on their way home from Dublin Airport, the girls said they feel 'amazing' in the aftermath of their achievement. "They cannot wait to get back to Tullamore,' added Ms Bourke. President Michael D Higgins said the team's accomplishment in reaching the world championships serves 'as a powerful reminder of the immense potential that lies in the minds and hands of our young people, particularly young girls, when given the opportunity to engage with science, technology, engineering and mathematics'. The team will be honoured with a special homecoming event with family and friends in Tullamore today, before their school welcomes them back with an official homecoming event on Monday. Ms Bourke said the school recognised the importance of helping students to 'open up doors to opportunities that they wouldn't get in the classroom through the curriculum'. "They thought this was very important. We're just facilitating that which is great, to come home with such a prestigious award like we are absolutely over the moon.'
CBC
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
How I learned the beauty of a simple life from my 90-year-old aunt who lives alone in rural Manitoba
Cutaways is a personal essay series where Canadian filmmakers tell the story of how their film was made. This Hot Docs 2025 edition by direct or Amalie Atkins focuses on her film Agatha's Almanac The first time I filmed with my aunt, Agatha Bock, she arrived in Saskatoon by train to play a part in one of my earlier films, The Diamond Eye Assembly. Ready for anything, she had brought a suitcase with farmer's sausage wrapped in the Winnipeg Free Press, her red Pyrex bowl, a perogy-cutting pineapple tin and all my grandmother's handmade aprons. She shows up, every time, as her full self. During that project, I realized that in my next film, she should simply be herself, unscripted. Moving through her world already felt cinematic. Agatha's farm is only an hour from where I grew up in rural Manitoba, but it always felt like another world, shadowed by old oaks, thick with ferns and full of domestic rituals that left a lasting imprint on me. Every summer, we'd visit. And after my parents died, I felt a magnetic pull to reconnect with my family's matrilineal Mennonite history, rooted in Ukraine but still very much alive in the rhythms of Agatha's everyday life. I wanted to reconnect with a place that hadn't changed much, where every object — quilt, embroidered pillow, kitchen utensil, garden tool — had been made or held by my family and is still in use on Agatha's farm. There, I sensed something just beneath the surface, an elusive presence I now think of as "the Manitoba Feeling" — fractured histories held in the land, which are felt more than seen. These intangible currents connect us to place, story and each other. As the film progressed, I came to understand how much loss had occurred on the property in my aunt's childhood. Agatha is resilient and unstoppable. She is always on the move — planting, gathering, harvesting, making something, hosting someone or scheming on the phone. She has strong ideas and opinions, and nothing can be wasted. When I was a teenager, Agatha gave my mom a blue-flowered bedspread to pass on to me, and I gave it the classic teenage side-eye. After persistent questioning, I found out she'd pulled it from a box behind a dumpster. To her, it was a perfectly good bedspread. And this makes sense when you consider she was born during the Great Depression, when recycling and reusing items were standard practice, if not crucial for survival. When my dad died, Agatha arrived on the bus in her usual way, armed with jars of home-made chicken noodle soup, reused Styrofoam trays loaded with her famous perogies and iced sugar cookies packed into old tissue boxes, held together with tape. Anytime someone wept, I'd offer them the box. And instead of a tissue, they'd pull out a cookie — pink, yellow or robin's egg blue. In Agatha's world, everything is held together with tape — her chimney (she assures me this is safe!), her leaking water pails, her tools, her linoleum and her windows. Tape, a central motif in the film, not only serves a practical purpose but also as a space to record information she doesn't want to forget: "Good tub from Anne Leadbetter, June 2003." Years before I started the film Agatha's Almanac, my sister and I asked our aunt to teach us some of her processes. She started with her pickle recipe (only the tiniest cucumbers make it into her pickle jars). I noticed the label on her secret ingredient: "Horseradish 1975," the year I was born. Next, she showed us how to make soap. She'd tagged the main ingredient "Good goose fat from mother 1982," referring to my grandmother, who had died when I was 12. It made me wonder if she had a container with "bad goose fat" and, if so, what it would be used for (because in Agatha's house, no goose fat would be thrown away). To tell this story, centred around the life of one woman, I sought out an all-female crew. Through filmmaker Heidi Phillips, I met cinematographer Rhayne Vermette, who brought Charlene Moore on board as sound recordist and Kristiane Church as production coordinator. Agatha immediately welcomed us with plates of varenyky and a list of house rules. We filmed her carving a thick-skinned watermelon for over two hours. No one questioned it — and if they had, I'm not sure I could have explained why it mattered. Later, I found out the watermelon had originated from my grandmother's seeds. They had been saved, stashed and regrown for 37 years. This scene was about more than Agatha's brightly coloured outfit and her sculptural way with a knife — it was a moment that connected the past to the present, a quiet continuity running through the earth of her garden. Another time, we arrived to a cold, dark house after driving through a sudden flurry of snow. Agatha's power was out. Luckily, we were relying mostly on natural light throughout the film. Every time a complicated situation presented itself, we found ways to keep going. We worked so well together, with ease and a collaborative spirit. What began as a short personal experiment grew into so much more. After the first shoot with the watermelon, I was hooked. After each shoot, I matched the 16-mm film with audio. Somewhere along the way, I realized this wasn't going to be a short anymore, but a multi-chapter project. The structure of an almanac emerged, exploring both the visible and the unseen aspects of Agatha's world. That winter, I shot 11 rolls of film: macro close-ups of hoarfrost, ice fog swirling off the river in –40 C cold and quilts floating on a line against the snow. The colder the winter, the more beautiful the footage. With high hopes, I sent the film to Negativeland, a lab in New York. The box was delivered on a Saturday, and somebody stole it before it could be collected on the Monday. I lost the winter. And it wasn't just a technical setback. It felt like a disruption of time, as if a part of Agatha's world was gone. Four chapters were screened in an exhibition at the Anchorage Museum in Alaska and rotated with the seasons. I kept going. Filming as many of Agatha's processes as possible became an obsession. When I realized I had gathered well over two hours of footage, I realized it was going to be a feature. I made it to the farm every spring, summer or fall, sometimes with the crew, sometimes alone. Last July, I filmed the final roll: Agatha wandering through the yard in her hip waders, the ones she wears when the basement floods. What I observed in those six years was Agatha's devotion — to her garden and her particular ways of life — her generosity and her care. She shows that ritual doesn't need to be grand to be sacred. Her way of moving through the world with purpose, frugality and intention is the foundation of this film.
Telegraph
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
How to write a crime thriller – with help from AI-gatha Christie
Agatha Christie is the world's best-selling author, so if you wanted to learn how to write a crime novel she's the first person you'd ask. Unfortunately, she died in 1976. But in the age of AI, with a plot twist that would assuredly have had Christie herself itching to incorporate it in a book, death need not be the end. A new BBC Maestro course of online video lessons, made in conjunction with Christie's estate, brings the queen of crime back to life. 'First and foremost, for me, this project is about looking at her process as a writer and paying homage to that,' says James Prichard, Christie's great-grandson and the Chairman and CEO of Agatha Christie Limited. 'One of the things I am proudest of that has happened over the last however many years is how seriously Agatha Christie is taken, which I don't think was always the case. She is now held in the regard and esteem that she should be as a writer.' It's that esteem that will encourage wannabe Christies – in this case, myself – to pay their £120 for a Maestro subscription (which gets you a year's access to all manner of courses from Stephen Bartlett to JoJo Moyes to Jo Malone). The new Agatha series is a short lecture course given by a recreation of the writer herself, with Christie's face and voice somehow grafted on to a (brilliant) performance from the actor Vivien Keene. Delivered across 11 videos, all of less than 20 minutes, you sit and are spoken to – nothing interactive here – as Agatha takes you through plotting, structure, detectives and satisfying resolutions. The difference to all the other BBC Maestro courses is that Christie's writing advice is only sort-of delivered by Christie. But the message does come from the horse's mouth, so to speak – it was one of the stipulations of the Christie estate that every one of the words that Keene speaks should have come from Christie's pen. 'It had to be her lessons; it couldn't be some made up thing,' says Prichard. 'So we had a team of academics under Dr Mark Aldridge [an acknowledged Christie expert] to see to that.' In order to fit with the BBC Maestro credo – 'Let the greatest be your teacher' – 'It had to look and sound like her,' says Prichard. 'And what they have done is extraordinary. The final thing was that it had to be of value to both aspiring writers and fans. And I think it does that. All I can say is I was speaking to my father on Friday and both of us agreed that we'd learned a hell of a lot from her that we didn't know.' If AI-gatha's Maestro course could teach her own relatives a thing or two – Prichard said that he learned from the course that Christie's books work because 'they're actually about people, and people never really change' — then surely it could help me? I was lucky enough to get an early view of the Christie course and can report that watching Agatha, or 'Agatha,' dole out aperçus on story structure, cast creation, plot twists, red herrings, and the art of suspense, was most of all… unnerving. A half-smiling Christie-bot stares barrel-straight down the camera with schoolmarm-ish supremacy. She seemed to sense my self-doubt, my daft plot ideas, my general unease. There is also some mild unease at having AI involved at all. To authors, AI is perceived as a threat more than a boon. 'I'd be lying if I said there weren't worries [about using AI],' says James Prichard. 'But I believe and I hope that this is using AI in both a helpful and ethical way. The AI model of Agatha doesn't work without the performance of Vivien Keene. This was not written by AI. It is a leading academic unearthing everything that she said about writing. And I believe that what we are delivering here in terms of her message is better presented and will reach more people as a result of being presented, if I can use inverted commas, 'by her.'' What kind of tutor is AI-gatha? The course shows that Christie plainly studied her craft and while she opens up saying, 'I don't feel I have any particular method when it comes to writing,' which is disappointing, she does in fact adhere to a broad methodology founded in meticulous planning. 'And I take it seriously,' she says, looking serious. The importance of saying something – not preaching but there being some form of moral backbone to your story — is emphasised throughout. Readers like to see justice served, she says. 'I write to entertain but there is a dash of the old morality play in my work – hunting down the guilty to protect the innocent.' But where to even start? That's my problem. Agatha recommends - glory be! – idleness (but not sloth) as a fallow field where ideas can take seed. She encourages eavesdropping on conversations on buses as a source of characters and dialogue, and so I head to that virtual bus that is the Internet and find that Telegraph readers are particularly interested in Air Fryers (see below). I open with a blood-spattered, Grand Guignol set piece, only to remember that Agatha 'doesn't like violence;' she likes puzzles with realistic characters in well-defined settings. And so I concoct a well-defined village and open up with what I hope is a well-defined, air-fryer related teaser. Most of all, she says, in a computer-generated voice that somehow defies all dissent, you 'must play fair' with your reader. Set that puzzle, ask the questions, but don't expect them to use their own little grey cells to unpick mysteries that can't be unpicked. So I make sure to introduce the detective, a sidekick (the reader's eyes and ears) and the murderer in the first few pages. And so with all that in mind, I present to you my first attempt at a crime thriller. No AI was involved in its writing. Perhaps that would have helped… For more details on BBC Maestro's Agatha Christie course, see here The Air Fryer Cracked From Side to Side By a student of AI-gatha Christie The air fryer started shaking on the worktop. The chicken wings within were crisp and crumbly, cooked at least 33 seconds quicker than they would have been in a conventional oven, but that meant nothing to Mrs Veronica Dime. She just stood there, staring at the silicon-lined basket, mouthing, 'Surely…' She didn't have time to add, 'not.' The air fryer exploded, sending chicken wings to the ceiling and Mrs Veronica Dime to the floor. As the first flames danced down the kitchen island, there she remained. Baked to perfection. 'Hold on, just a minute, I'm coming!' said Roger Cairns as he ran down the hall. Packages, deliveries, sorry we missed you… this was the scourge of so-called convenience. Everything the next day, but never a moment's rest (now that his wife Penelope had discovered Amazon Prime). He looked through the peephole to see a man in a motorcycle helmet holding a large cardboard box. It wasn't the usual delivery man, but then these days there was no usual delivery man – anyone and everyone could turn up unannounced with a 'parcel for you.' Roger opened the door, said hello and reached for the package. The man seemed reluctant to hand it over. 'Are you Roger Cairns?' he said, voice muffled through his visor. He didn't have a motorbike parked outside like they normally did. 'Why yes I am. How are you today?' said Roger. The delivery man didn't answer. He handed over the package and scurried off, leaving Roger on the doorstep. The parcel was addressed to him, but he didn't recall ordering it. Dodging a Labrador and the umbrella rack on his way back to the kitchen – why was the godforsaken umbrella rack always in the way? – he set to the packing tape with a kitchen knife. It was an 'Air Fryer,' whatever that was, and it came with an anonymous note: 'This is for you.' 'To lose one parish councillor to a freak air fryer explosion may be regarded as misfortune,' said Lt Col. Bennett. 'To lose two looks like carelessness. I think it was Richard Osman who first said that.' Monique Van Dingus put down her cello. 'Don't tell the police. They won't know what to do and anyway, there's nothing to tell yet.' Bennett poured the tea. 'But don't you think it's strange – two new air fryers, both delivered when no one actually ordered them, to people who wouldn't know an air fryer from a kumquat, both of whom are now dead?' 'It's only strange if you think guilt is strange, or greed, or retribution,' said Monique. 'Are you saying what I think you're saying? 'What do you think I'm saying?' 'I don't know. I was hoping you'd say it and then I wouldn't have to ask.' 'Well then yes. This looks like murder.' Bennett had known Van Dingus long enough to know that she would not say such a thing lightly. Ever since she had moved in to Chiply Wensdale, taking the old railwayman's cottage that had once belonged to Roger and Penelope Cairns' errant son Wrongun, she had brought energy and no little gumption to the proceedings of the Parish Council. She was, Bennett had come to learn, the daughter of a once-famed German detective who had grown up in the suburbs of Aachen — to her, there were no mysteries, just an absence of evidence. That of course never explained the mystery of why she had come to Chiply in the first place. Some said she had arrived to start up a garden business called, 'Convenient Plotting.' But even Van Dingus confessed that she had never seen anything like the Air Fryer Murders. No one had. They were in many ways, Van Dingus would come to say years later, the perfect crime. Everyone was buying Air Fryers. They were just so convenient and took up remarkably little space on the worktop. So the sight of a Ninja Foodie XL Two-Tier being delivered to a Chiply Wensdale front door had become part of village life. No more remarkable, you might say, than Roger Cairns popping round to Veronica Dime's each Wednesday morning. Where if you looked at the upstairs window, shortly afterwards the bedroom curtains would be hurriedly closed…
Hindustan Times
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Revealed: The mystery that Agatha Christie was
The abiding memory of my teenage years is reading Agatha Christie. On holiday from school, I would spend hot summer afternoons stretched out on a sofa under a furiously whirling fan, absorbed in her murder mysteries. It was mainly Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, Parker Pyne and Harley Quin, I knew nothing. But I was dimly aware that she had written 66 detective novels, which sold over 2 billion copies, an amount surpassed only by the Bible and Shakespeare and translated into over a hundred languages. However, of Agatha Christie herself, I knew precious little. That has now been filled in by Lucy Worsley's fascinating biography, which I chanced upon recently. It is rightly subtitled A Very Elusive Woman. But once you have read it, you feel you know the author intimately. Born to an American father, Christie was the surname she got from her first husband. Her only child, Rosalind, was from this marriage. It lasted from 1914 till 1928, when Archibald Christie's infidelity led to a painful divorce. Two years later Agatha married an archaeologist over a decade younger. It was on his digs in the Middle East that she got to know Iraq (Mesopotamia) and Egypt. Worsley reveals she financed much of her husband's work. In return, she wrote Death on the Nile, Murder in Mesopotamia, and Murder on the Orient Express. She was a devoted if somewhat jealous wife. A portable toilet was built for her so she could accompany her husband, Max Mallowan, to his archaeological sites. Worsley says it was, in fact, 'a tea chest with a brass-hinged mahogany seat'. Most of you probably know Agatha as an author of thrillers. But there was a lot more to her. Writing as Mary Westmacott, she authored six romantic novels. She was also an accomplished playwright. Two of her most famous plays are The Mousetrap and Witness for the Prosecution. The former ran continuously in a London West End theatre from 1952 till 2020, when it had to be temporarily discontinued because of Covid. It reopened in 2021. Poirot is by far her most famous creation but, in fact, she thought he was 'rather insufferable'. Following his last appearance in Curtain in 1975, the New York Times published his obituary on its front page. Agatha lived to be 86 and Worsley reveals she was writing well into her 80s. When she died 'her last notebooks still contain ideas for yet another novel. It was to feature an entirely new idea, about two students who murder a boy purely as an experiment.' Not surprisingly, mystery surrounded Agatha's own life. In 1926, when her marriage with Christie was teetering, she disappeared for ten days. A massive manhunt was conducted but no one knew where she was. Worsley says her critics considered her 'a manipulative minx', determined to seek revenge on her adulterous husband. But it seems she was going through a mental breakdown. Worsley inclines to that view. However, the joy of Worsley's book is not just the broad sweep of the story she tells but also the small little nuggets she reveals. They surprise, like little gifts on a treasure hunt. Agatha's great career stumbled at its very start. Her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was rejected by two publishers before The Bodley Head took it on. At 36, she weighed 11 stone. That went up to 13 in later years. She was certainly a big woman. And Agatha loved houses. She owned eight! But she could be quite careless. Worsley points out that Poirot lives in Whitehaven Mansions except when he lives at Whitehouse Mansions. In Sleeping Murder, a clerk, a receptionist and a train passenger are all accidentally given the same name, Narracott, which is also the name of a chambermaid, a boatman and a policeman in three completely different books. After a heart attack in 1974, Agatha was asked how she'd like to be remembered. 'A rather good writer of detective stories,' was her reply. I would never disagree. Karan Thapar is the author of Devil's Advocate: The Untold Story. The views expressed are personal
