 Good evening everybody and welcome to the venerable but vibey British library for this very special literary salon celebrating the incomparable enigmatic Miss Jane Marple and beneath your feet are copies of every single Agatha Christy novel not just copies but the very very first editions some scribbled in by herself so just feel that Agatha energy surging up through your feet this evening and enjoy I have chosen an arsenic green tie especially for the occasion as did the head of the British library without consulting me also wearing the arsenic green tie he will discover that his tie is poisoned by the end of the event so anyway in a minute you're gonna I'm gonna be joined by three very special guests before we begin please make sure that your phones are switched off or there will be a murder in the library I'll let you do that it's always so much more satisfying when Scottish people say murder much more fatal murder in the library so tonight is the much postponed long-awaited official return of Miss Marple in the brand-new collection of 12 original tales by some of the world's finest writers including Naomi Alderman, Gene Quark and Natalie Haines and you can find more appearances from Naomi and Natalie on the Salon podcast each gripping new story takes inspiration from Christy's classic novels and presents our beloved sleuths with a brand-new mystery to solve and as ever Miss Marple knows much more than she appears to Jane Marple as many of you will know was first introduced to readers in 1927 in the short story can anybody shout the title out before I read it the she oh you're not it's good not as hot as I thought you were the Tuesday nightclub she made her first appearance in a full-length novel in 1930s the murder at the vicarage and she went on to appear in 12 novels and 20 short stories and she never aged a day I want to know about her moisturizer that is really what I want to know about she was supposedly based on Christy's grandmother and on her grandmother's friends although Christy wrote later on that Miss Marple was far more fussy and spinster-ish than my grandmother ever was it's nearly half a century since Miss Marple's last outing in fiction that was the novel published in 1976 so this collection is very welcome and as I say she's no older she's just as wise crime more than any other genre reflects the world that it's published into reflects the world of the moment events of the day preoccupations and prejudices and the world has changed a lot since Miss Marple last appeared in 1976 and crime fiction has changed with it and partly because of it because Marple was such a pioneer as was Christy the character of Marple evolves across the novels just as she's interpreted differently by each of the actresses who have played her but the human heart remains the same it has the same capacity for dark deeds it has the same capacity for lightness so we meet this icon again but she's somehow fresh in the new collection she spends a lot of time solving crime in Sussex I live in Sussex there is not that much crime there honestly it's a safe place to visit but I do notice there's more of it in East Sussex than in West Sussex anyway she she takes tea at various vicarages and a bit to get away from it all she escapes to America and the brilliantly titled Miss Marple takes Manhattan absolutely brilliant that's a story by Elisa Cole and she seeks son on the Amalfi Coast in Murder at the Villarosa by Ellie Griffiths as always we meet her very good friends who are a bit behind shall we say and her artistic nephew Raymond who's doing very well with his novels one of them is being adapted on Broadway and she goes to stay with various school friends some more murderous than others and there is of course a fatally festive Christmas wherever she goes she takes a wee bag of knitting and a tangle of suspicion and there may also be one or two or three snifters of cherry brandy so tonight all you Marple super fans will have the chance to win a bundle of prizes I'm gonna read out what they are we've got a full set of the reissued novels from Harper Collins so get yourself a new shelf a gorgeous silky Queen of Crime cushion designed by Karen Mayburn and a jigsaw which I have tried to do it is so fiendish I'm not sure she could actually finish it and it's got about a million pieces in it so we'll see you through the winter so we've got a bundle of those for you here in the room to win and a bundle for people online to win as well and all you have to do to enter is ask a question could it be any easier that's not a comment I will murder you for a comment you can ask a question and be picked so an extra warm welcome to you if this is your first literary salon thank you so much for joining us I've been hosting Salon since 2008 and I know that there are some people here tonight who've been to most of them and 2019 we added Salons online so that you can join us at home and your jammies you might be in your jammies you might be dressed like for a cocktail party at the vicarage or a combination of the both and I did an event earlier this year and Annie Lennox was at it absolutely stunning she was on zoom and there she was the hair the makeup a pussy-bowl blouse she was accepting an honor and I was just like oh my god it's Annie Lennox and when it was her turn to leave she closed her laptop and she didn't realize the camera was gonna go down with the top of the computer and we saw that she was wearing fluffy cow print pajama pants and some lovely mules and I just loved it even more for that actually so any past Salon guests include this year Douglas Stewart Dolly Alderton Maggie O'Farrell Jojo Moyes and Satnam Sanghera and you can catch them all on our podcast and on our YouTube channel tonight's hashtag is Marple if you're tweeting it's also lit Salon now before I welcome my guests some Marple superfans wanted to share the love roll VT I used to live in a tiny little village in Northamptonshire on a bigger state and one of my neighbors rejoiced in the name of Nancy Brains Nancy was retired had been in service at the big house her husband had worked on the estate and the little cottage overlooked the brook and the one street in the village about 200 souls and Nancy would sit out on a bench and without much commentary or obvious interest just noted the comings and goings of people every day the disruption to the pattern the tiny little kink in what you expected from that she had the most extraordinary ability to see into the reality of people's lives who they were and what they did and I often think of her when I do I think of Jane Marple with her BDI on the street as St. Mary Meade gritty realism Hi I'm Jean Kwok and I wrote a story from Marple called The Jade Empress in which Miss Marple goes on a cruise to Hong Kong and first one victim falls then another until it's clear there's a murderer on board and no one can get off the ship I'm a first generation immigrant and so I grew up in an insular world my family was old-fashioned and very little penetrated that bubble around us but Agatha Christie was someone who somehow transcended that barrier of culture and language so when I was trying to learn English I naturally turned to Agatha Christie's books and I loved them when I was approached for this project I was very honored to have the opportunity to bring Miss Marple into an Asian world was very meaningful to me Hi I'm Ruth Ware I was so honored to be asked to contribute a story to the Marple anthology to me Agatha Christie is the queen of plotting and that satisfying moment at the end of every one of her books where the pieces click into place and all those little extraneous details that you thought were just scene building are revealed to be essential clues to solving the mystery is just the purest kind of reading pleasure I know and it's what I strive to do at the end of my own books and it's the pleasure that I try to give in my Miss Marple story Miss Marple's Christmas responsible for murderous tinsel and so we were going to be joined tonight by James Pritchard who is the great grandson of Agatha Christie and CEO of the Agatha Christie States but James is not well um however we have an extra guest who is going to be joining us um her name is Elba too she is a bibliotherapist and the author of the novel Cure she's also the salons and how is bibliotherapist so she's going to join us in the moment talking about the joys of reading mystery and of cozy crime so in order my guests are literary goddess and creator of the women's prize Kate Morse the fiendishly brilliant mega best-selling Christie superfan Lucy Foley and Elba too right then it's very lovely to have you all here I've got my gramophone at the ready should be fuel the need for a Charleston um Kate you're going to give us a reading from your story apparently um which is the mystery of the acid soil story set in Sussex a place you know well obviously well what we've just discovered is that we all live in Sussex um quite close to each other so we think we should be in Horsham see rather than in London yeah well I'll just get the British Library to move to Horsham I'm sure that that'll be fine so we couldn't hear anything you were saying back it was all flattering so I'm sure it was fantastic um so I don't know if you said what we were asked to do or anything about it no I haven't given them any of the stories of the rules or the setup or anything like that they just know that you're going to read them from from your short story so you don't want me to do any of that now you want me to read this story just just read the story just read the story Kate it's why you're here just read the story and then we'll chat about it yeah so um my story however um is set um after the end of the Second World War and um at a moment that was a kind of tipping point in English village life which was that we all look back and of course we're all fighting for this now about how important the NHS was and how everybody would assume that it was a brilliant thing but actually within every small village and community there were people who felt it was not a good thing and many of those people were doctors and I just thought that that moment of change really big social change would be quite fun to write a story so my story is set in Fishbourne in Chichester in sort of 1948-1949 and I um where am I going to read it from so you know the page reference I was given 320 yeah that turns out to be for the proof not the book oh but that doesn't matter really because I'm just going to read um a little bit from here instead lovely um so all you need to know that Miss Marple has gone to stay with her friend Emilyne Strickett and Emilyne Strickett was a girl uh with Carrie Louise and Ruth that some of you will know from that particular Marple novel and so I gave her an extra friend and it's clear that something is going rather wrong um there three quarters of an hour later Miss Marple and Emilyne was standing outside the bull's head on the main road in Fishbourne the early morning clouds had burnt off and the sun was now quite fierce in an intense blue sky Miss Marple's face was somber are we any further along Jane oh I think so after all cases such as this are almost always the same I know in books it is generally the most unlikely person but I never find that rule applies in real life except except except it seems to me there is more to it Miss Marple frowned it's the sequence of things all running together there being two glasses and Mrs hands being dismissed from Cooper service Emilyne's eyes were bright and what do you think that Dr Barden understood he had made a terrible mistake and regretted it and Cooper realized I can't begin to say I understand but it really is most exciting Miss Marple's expression grew even more grave no Emmy murder isn't a thing to be taken lightly murder Emily wailed do you mean to say that Dr Barden was murdered oh I think so Emilyne's eyes grew wide shouldn't we tell someone having a suspicion is not the same as proof Miss Marple glanced at her wristwatch I wonder if the Rector would forgive us for calling on him a little earlier than usual Emily no but her mouth then closed it again I will see if Williams might drive us he's by way of being the informal village taxi service it's quite a step from here to the rectory she turned to knock on the door of a second cottage in the same room oh I've remembered it was Williams who had the argument with Dr Barden so much the better said Miss Marple with a gleam in her sharp blue eyes that was so not the bit I was going to read very well there we go completely inexplicable who the characters were but we've got all the ingredients you've got we've got a vicarage we've got faithful servants yeah class tension all of the kind of key you know key backgrounds elements for things to spark into life was that all there for you when you got the call did you think that's that's where I'm gonna do it no I think for me it was and I'm sure Lucy feels the same and we've we've all done a few events with some of the other Marpleites as we think of ourselves and I think everybody felt an enormous sense of responsibility that all of you and all of us love Miss Marple and we admire Agatha Christie the biggest selling author in world history yes you know just extraordinary so and we were given quite tight guidelines which will come back to but I think it was the sense of how could we write a true version of Christie's Miss Marple that would also feel plausible and new and interesting yeah and for me I went back I think we all did this didn't we we you know we all lay around on sofas eating chocolates rereading all the 12 novels and all the short stories and saying this is work I'm working but I found in several of the short stories I was looking for clues there's there are many clues to who Miss Marple is in the novels and particularly the short stories so I discovered that Miss Marple had an uncle who was canon at Chichester Cathedral many of you will know that I live outside Chichester and it's my hometown and so I thought ah so she could absolutely know that part of the world I then with a couple of the stories there are two occasions where she does not act and because she does not act somebody dies even because she doesn't take action because she's not decisive yeah so I felt the Miss Marples that Christie created would never have forgiven herself for that her conscience for not having prevented a murder would be very significant and so that was really the driving force for my story the mystery of the acid soil was the idea that she was saying I remember the time when I didn't do this what was the case that you saw in the story was it was it a spa hotel or somewhere like that yes it was a spa hotel where there's a lovely you know you know good fellow well-met you know that kind of chap and a woman and she's gone off shopping and it's just before Christmas and I can't remember the name of the story which I should have obviously looked up but but it's the one where the key clue really is that the hat doesn't fit on the head of the woman who's lying dead in the room and some of you will remember that it's one of the one of those early short stories and it was exactly that idea of a man who is very plausible and who is terribly friendly and his wife is a bit annoying and nobody really likes her very much and Jane Marple kind of falls for that she's annoying the woman is annoying but at the same time she knows that of course the man can't be trusted and we know that she's always comparing everybody to somebody she knows in St Mary Meade and so she she has all of those that that idea that we all know to be true that big city tiny village people are very much the same you know you can you can spot a wrong and so I liked the idea my story is nobody knows there's been a crime and I also because I'm that girl that always did her homework I took the you know one of the rules seriously about it would be lovely if there was a gardening theme yes and so I thought well obviously there has to be a gardening theme even you're not a natural I am I'd sit in my garden which my husband and my mother and or in the old days looked after and drink wine yeah I'm not a gardener I am terrific in the garden from that point of view under a tree like you know shardony garden shardony gardener well as savblanc savblanc no you can't say that after trust after those trust no now we know that that was her tip anyway so the point was that I thought that that would be very enjoyable as well but it was it was very much that idea of why I think Ms Marple matters so much that she is one of those very rare older women in literature who is there on her own terms she's not there as somebody's mother or wife or girlfriend she is happy as herself she has a very clear moral code and she has that thing that all older women know that you become invisible and she uses that as a way of being this dynamic nemesis as we of course know the last written marple novel although not the last published marple novel and so I wanted her to be active there are all sorts of things that are so interesting partly from the television Joan Hickson is my television marple and everybody has their own television marple but in fact when you read all the books and you go back to them she's tall and I never you know I don't never think you're as tall but she's described always as tall and she's um the first time she appears she's my age 28 yes 29 yeah but but that's also really interesting isn't it her age changes because in a later in a later novel she's she's not far off 90 at one point well I mean she she does age within the novels and of course the one that kind of kicks it slightly out of the park is my favorite marple which is sleeping murder which was written during the second world war she wrote a marple and a pyro in case something happened to her and she couldn't close her character so she wrote curtain she wrote curtain for pyro and she wrote sleeping murder for marple in case she died in case she died and couldn't close it for her character I love that she was thinking that that would be our greatest worry if you know it's like the world is ended actually but it's right though we we you look for that comfort it would have been devastating and that's why sleeping murder is out of sequence and so it's set in the 30s and it's actually the most brilliant um recovered memory story I mean well before the times that that was you know but nemesis there's the last one so she's you know she's old and creaky and nemesis but in other earlier ones she physically stops the murderer not just because she's sitting there in the corner knitting and the marple that we meet in the very first novel is not the marple we meet in the second novel no that's the thing she'd realized that that miss marple was somebody so she's part of what she calls the old pussies and she's a little bit more like that and slightly gossipy and then when she reappears in the next marvel novel which is quite a few years later she's a more purposeful dynamic hero than she was Lucy who's your favorite telly marple geraldine mcqueen yeah virtually I love her I just think she's got that you talked about the gleam in her blue eyes I think she's got that and she's tall is she tall she seems she projects tallness I always think of geraldine mcqueen as being towering there's a sort of sprightliness about her and um yeah just a magic that I sort of see in in my marple and she's quite dynamic yeah you know um so yeah she's got a lot about our Ella who's your favorite I love geraldine as well actually oh yeah yeah everyone loves geraldine mcqueen a fair few geraldine but geraldine herself put her hand up at the back hands hands up for Joan Hicks oh lots thank you oh yeah Joan's your boy I'm just gonna say mine's Angela Lansbury because I love her and everything but Angela Lansbury anybody knows just just just we'll hang we'll have drinks later we'll do that later I think Joan wins the day there and uh to just go back to your story you mentioned there about the NHS that's that this was an aspect to the story and lots of them as I said at the beginning crime brings in contemporary history more I think than any other sort of genre fiction um and you've chosen the NHS you know antisemitism as a subject of another story partly and I did not realize at the time that doctors were so resistant to the setting up yeah yeah and that actually there was this idea that people would people wouldn't trust the NHS wait for it because they weren't paying for it I know that's right yeah yeah and and also I think that there'd been there's so much you know I would say one of the great uh post second world war novels obviously I would say this is Andrea Levy's small island and the the fact the consequences obviously my wonderful parents are both gone now but Granny Rosie who I care for is still very much around and all the focus is always on those years of the war but in a way the biggest seismic shift in society was at home after the war had finished with rationing and you know that you know that famous line uh when Churchill was voted out wear the masters now and the sense that all of society was blowing up now I I don't know if anybody feels they could imagine what that would feel um but you know that kind of that tipping point yeah but also that's where Miss Marple and you know the friend I've invented for Emily and Strickett are so important because they are the anchoring of the old world to the present and potentially the future and so I wanted to you know my my story is is a very much old-fashioned Agatha Christie short story long short story sorry Anna you know we were given a word like obviously mine was you know not as short as it might have been but it was exactly that sense of okay what would someone like Miss Marple be feeling at this moment because we jump with Marple you know we have that you know the first novel and then we jump you know 10 years before we get the next one and a lot of them are in the 50s and 60s and beyond yeah um and so I think that's one of the reasons I love sleeping murders so much because it's before the war and I think there's still that kind of texture of that type of England is it in your story or is it your story where you refer to her as a late Victorian she refers to herself as a late Victorian I didn't remember that from the original original novels but I went back and it is it is there she is yeah it's very much part of her identity I think and you know my story she's got her smelling salts you know yeah self-volatile yeah yeah and also I think that um she was the last generation Miss Marple Miss Marple yeah who believed absolutely that their vision of the world was the vision of the world that there wasn't any ambivalence there wasn't any doubt and that of course is what you need in a I would say an old-fashioned detective story which is that there is a moral code that it's wrong to murder um and that you um however unpopular it makes you use you you stand up and be counted and so in mine I liked the idea that um nobody believed there'd been a murder and they certainly didn't believe there'd been two murders and now the goal was to prevent a second murder and all the way through all of Christie not just Marple but very particularly Marple doctors are very key um you know they they always appear the church is very key yeah um and you know there's another mention of you know her sister has been down in Sussex so I just thought well I'm going to put my Miss Marple in my home yeah and see how she gets on it's an absolutely terrific story I enjoyed it so much um and I want to ask you about the rules actually ask both of you about about the rules what rules were you given about what you could do with Miss Jane Marple and your and your story well we were given I think really mostly really sensible rules yeah so you don't have to say that just because your editor's no no no no no but actually yes um but it's not entirely come from the editor it's kind of possibly come from the agrocracy estate but um the first one was that our Jane Marple could only exist within the time periods that she exists in Christie and I think that was a really good rule so you couldn't write young Marple that's school yeah yeah okay and I think or a modern Miss Marple or a modern Miss Marple you know time Miss Marple 2022 yeah yeah Miss Marple at the rave you know we didn't do that um we have to see it with her smelling salt passing the smelling salt trying to get a load of this get a load of this I'm on the train couldn't do that she'd be great at texting this Marple she'd be really hard text messages brilliant can you imagine it would be very odd yeah it'd be very odd and I would actually I would love to see what Agatha Christie would do with sort of modern technology because she was right at the forefront of some forensics everything you know she knew her stuff so I think she'd have a lot of fun with sort of messages and email and you know air tags and all of that you're totally beyond panels with her no the two of you on those gorgeous crime panel was talking about it I can imagine that I can see it no she wouldn't have enjoyed it and then other ones we had do you want to say some of the other um no romantic interests yeah which again I really hate all sense okay is there a weft of any romantic interest ever no no I think Agatha Christie was very clear that that was not what she wanted to do because really prior to Miss Marple every sort of female detective tended to be sort of young and there was always a romantic interest sort of um I think even Dorothy Al Sayers you know there was there was a romantic interest hanging around Harriet Vane Harriet Vane exactly um so I think she was very clear that she didn't want it to be complicated by that because it's about her right it's not about her in relation to her to a man and also the idea that her character and purpose is not because the person she loved died in the war no it is because that's who she is so we do know from the novels and short stories that there were one or two uh gentlemen she quite liked when she was younger yeah because there's a reference in one of the stories to um you know she her father put an end to this and she cried for a day or something you know something like that but I thought that was a great one as well and that's actually one thing that you know I love the TV adaptations all of them but there's that's one thing that slightly irritates me because I think in one of them certainly in the Geraldine McEwan ones they they have this sort of backstory and this love interest and all of that and it's sort of and I think that's almost in the first one and that sort of puts her in the context of this sort of failed little lost love yeah yeah totally it's so unnecessary it's not what we want it's either grief or love yeah yeah could just be an independent person yeah and then we weren't allowed to have her meet Poirot yes oh she wasn't allowed to meet no they they couldn't even like glancing leave Victoria station quite tempting no Poirot well apparently Agatha Christie said they would never meet she would never have them meet because Akula Poirot was such an egoist he would hate being taught his job by an elderly woman um she I think she crained to really kind of laze him I mean that that's what's interesting is in a way there's more of Christie in Ariadne Oliver than any of the other characters you know who's always dropping her apples and it is furious with her detective the Finn that she's never been to Finland and now she's stuck with him so that was it and the last one was the thing about gardening which almost everybody else ignored oh well there is there is I'm trying to think there is a there is a bit of gardening in one of the other stories you can't you're Miss Marple goes somewhere to visit a garden does she know she has she goes to visit some Japanese maples she's gone to visit the Japanese maples and there's a sort of something about um the flowers that used to be dyed for hats yes it's a bit tangential but it's there Google is your friend when it comes to you just need to be listened to gardeners question time or become a souvenir on Blanc gardener like a many poisons but those were the only limitations that you're given not much not much actually no no so if you didn't have limitations what would you do I'd have her meet more meet Poirot show him a thing or two I think it'd be such fun because you'd hate it you can just imagine it yeah um so that'd be great yeah what about you I would have really loved to have written her first world war story right because she's you know when we meet her she's in her 60s possibly beginning of 60s possibly later it's never quite clear um but that's a long time so we have lots of clues about where she went to school and her happy family I finished school yeah and you know all of that and that's where I've given her emeline stricter tonight you know I use um uh you know they do it with mirrors you know that those two American sisters and added emeline into that but the for her to have the character that she has and the principle that she has and the courage she has because at any moment if she's faced with somebody who has murdered other people she steps up now that is courageous I always find that terrifying I'm always genuinely fearful that she's going to be umped off by the end there are moments in this book where you really think that's about to happen and I would say you know one of the great scenes in that is is in a murder is announced which I think is another one of the great marbles um when you know she she actually confronts the the murderer doing murder essentially and and stops it so I would have loved to have written her in the first world war would that be a novel novella a novel yeah a novel yeah do it do it yeah unauthorized by the christie estate however half a part of these brillars yeah miss harple miss carpool yeah exactly no I could say when you read it you heard it here first I had this conversation with Ian ranking recently about rebus um and um rebus's story in northern Ireland you know where he was out where he was you know in the military before he was a police officer and um and it's all there in that first novel and I think it's not just in crosses or black and blue I can't remember what the first novel is called but I mean you know so it's all sort of there and I said you know do you never do you never want to write it and he said no I would like somebody else to write it but when I'm dead oh really yeah so don't go bumping him off just so that you can write young rebus but I thought that was really interesting that you know he didn't sort of I think that's what he said he didn't want to well I mean in a way the thing is we all start with our own characters um at the moment that we have the story to tell and what I've learned over all these years is that often readers have or not not a closer attachment to your characters but in a way have built them a much bigger story that sometimes you have so Joanna Trollop once said to me said no the thing for me Kate is writing a novel is like um standing on a railway station uh the train comes in you get into the carriage you spend the duration of your journey in the carriage with those people then you get off and the train goes on without you and I thought that was a beautiful description of how it feels to write a novel because often people say to me oh can't you write on this story of these characters or and I think no the the story that I was going to tell about them I've told yeah you know I feel the same exactly the same way I feel exactly the same way I don't want to I ended it there for a reason for whatever reason for me or for them and I don't want to go back there and I always find it interesting when people have this imagination they've got a life for your characters or a story or an after sometimes quite long you know or they've written a story themselves and it's very flattering but it's like I I can't do that you that's for you to do you know it's the the gift that you give them but it's probably I mean it's probably one of my favorite things about being an author they that these people that have lived inside your head you know these creations yeah many people are talking about them as though they're real people and they believe in them as well it's just wonderful you know it's something magical that happens they sort of transcend the page yeah no that it is incredible when that happens it is incredibly incredibly flattering and Ella I want to ask you our in-house bibliotherapist so Ella prescribes fiction and non-fiction but mainly fiction for Life's Aos is the author of a book called The Novel Cure possibly one of the best titles ever and and how often do you prescribe Christie or Marpo and what for very frequently is the answer though in a way it's something that I tend to prescribe in passing because it could be so well known that when I do prescriptions for clients then I'm normally trying to give them more obscure authors people that they wouldn't have thought of reading themselves but I will always say as I'm having a bibliotherapy session of course you need to read some agatha Christie just for pure escapism or because if you're having a reading brat and you haven't been able to read for a while agatha Christie is your perfect writer to get back into reading and I've had so many conversations with clients around the world Hong Kong Sydney New York who have spent their last few years reading only agatha Christie such as women who've been breastfeeding through the night and the only thing that they could read at that time was agatha Christie because that was what kept them going between the early hours of two and five. Also menopausal women I think particularly benefit from Miss Marpo because as you say she's one of those few women who actually are invisible yet doing something deeply important and amazing and there's so few great books for menopausal women out there and it's one of the questions I get most frequently from clients is where are all the books for menopausal women I you know I want to read some interesting books that relate to me once I've had kids and done my career or whatever and there aren't that many books necessarily out there but Miss Marpo is a great inspiration and of course lots of people um learn English through agatha Christie. Very true yes I think she's it's clear in India I mean apparently that it's just kind of the first thing that people start to read well yes if not Harry Potter oh yeah maybe yeah well the wonderful um Jean Clark who wrote one of the stories um for the collection uh told me she she learned English. That's right from Agatha Christie. Agatha Christie um because she was first generation Chinese immigrant to the States and she would literally sit on the train or sit in her family's business and kind of sit there with her with an agatha Christie. You have such a particular way of speaking aren't you? Yes I know you're so proper. You know exactly how to behave at a Christmas drinks party in any part of East or West Sussex. And you know a lot about poison. Yeah I know a lot about poison which of course she never gets she worked you know and and during the war I mean it's incredible. No I didn't know that about the learning English thing but the British council do recommend or did recommend Agatha Christie books. It's sort of like cultural soft power. Yeah yeah yeah. So just going back to the Bevelua therapy why is it that you think people derive such pleasure and are so kind of invested in these books? I think she did invent archetypes of particular characters within her novels who still exist in our minds in so many future detective novels. So there's not just the great detectives Marple and Poirot but also the characters within the often big British country houses but kind of the dastardly aristocrat. The slightly potentially the very loyal servant and then maybe the very disloyal nephew etc. There's all these kind of great archetypes and we love those archetypes and we just we love that kind of certainty as Kate was saying earlier about the morality which eventually comes good in the end of the books and readers who I prescribe them to and who've often read them as their first reads really go to them for comfort I think for having that black and white certainty at the end of the book. I mean even though they're obviously not happy novels there's often terrible things happening within them. Justice is done pretty much every time by the end of the book. Yes Miss Marple gets her man or woman or a combination thereof and you said they're about comfort and I'm interested in this idea so much talk right now about cosy crime as a genre sort of kind of an oxymoron in a way you know when there's a very high body count in this book there are 12 stories there are many many many more bodies but you know books like you know Richard Coles Richard awesome lots of you know lots of sort of cozy loveliness not whimsy or twee but you know there is a kind of I think again a certainty isn't there that a comfort that comes from knowing that everything's going to work out. Yes and at this time of huge uncertainty in every way around the world I think there's that comfort of the the law or you know justice being done but also it's going back into another era and I think that is important in terms of nostalgia for the time in place. Yeah thinking about those parameters of not having a modern Miss Marple is actually going back to a time when there were no mobile phones and there was no climate change on the horizon and even politics might have seemed simpler perhaps anyway when you're reading. Yeah and also I think I think the key thing about what is cosy crime now which Christy is but I would say the bigger issue is that in thrillers the violence is on the page and often it's almost pornographic in the level of description and sometimes you have to wonder do you need all of that whereas within Christy and it's almost always violence against women almost always violence against women and with Christy it's about the puzzle it's not about let's show you how you shoot somebody or poison somebody it's about how it happened who did it why it happened so it's it's intellectual and satisfying because you're kind of always trying to beat beat the author as it were so it's it's a different kind of experience I would say because it is about the puzzle so you can see I'm going to be controversial here though and say I don't think Christy is cosy crime I actually think Christy's a lot less cosy than for example Richard Osmond which I love love those books but I think they're a cosy reading experience but I think that's different from the content there's some real darkness there there's a lot of talk about evil in the Marple works you know Miss Marple one of the reasons that she's a great detective is because she has a mind like a sewer as someone says you know she can conceive of some really dark stuff happening and you know you look elsewhere and the Christy can and you look at a book like Cricket House don't want to spoil her anything but the solution to that book the perpetrator I mean it still feels taboo today I think yes okay yeah it still feels dark and you look at a book like and then there were none and there's really no comfort to be found in that book you know it's bleak and horrible I love it for that so I think there's a really interesting thing because I think there is a coat I think absolutely it's a cosy reading experience yeah because there's wonderful the world and the world might be nostalgic but the events and the darkness yeah Lucy sort of poking around in the family sepulchre it's really gothic um so even with it and then there were none justice is done in a sense because all the people yes it's very they've done terrible things they've done terrible things so it is awful but and sort of moral there is reasserted you know yeah something deeply satisfying in that and it's so interesting because you know she made the decision Christy anybody who's read curtain and of course murder on the Orient Express those are the two moments where Poirot steps away from the absolute that murder is wrong whatever whatever the reason they should be brought to justice whereas Miss Marple never does never no because of the puzzle thing do you think that they bear rereading if you know or do you think you've kind of forgotten or you don't care about that point you're just along for the ride definitely great to reread if you're anything like me I've actually got a really bad memory for so and I read most of my agatha Christie's in my teens so I love going back to them now a couple of decades later and completely re-expanded 29 as well and actually I recently read a brilliant book for true agatha Christie nerds called the forensics of agatha by Carla Valentine which goes into immense detail about all the poisons and as you were saying shows you how she was really ahead of Christy was really ahead of the game with understanding forensics and it's so fascinating to analyze the plot through that lens of forensics because Carla Valentine knows her stuff because she's actually a someone that looks after dead bodies someone that looks after dead bodies it's a lovely way of describing a mortician someone that looks after dead bodies and a serial killer yeah exactly um is there a danger that this volume of poisons could be used as an instruction manual I mean how explicit is it it is quite explicit yeah yeah no it's a it's a worry my husband's students from his latest he teaches creative writing as a writer himself and they gave him a t-shirt to say thank you which said be careful otherwise I'll put you in my next novel really I could say that you know be careful otherwise I'll poison you wasn't that one of the other things that you wanted to know I think that the harp wanted to know was how we were going to do our victim in because they didn't want us all to use poison I think they thought yeah that's right we'd all do poison all right so you had to specify the means of death and the time of year yes which was a very you know because they didn't want because miss marbles you've got one Christmas here or two I couldn't do Christmas Ruth we're still Christmas Ruth we're got Christmas they didn't want everybody yeah sort of at the same time mine's in august which was not very fashionable it turned out you know but I mean I think you know the thing about what we all did that we we weren't given each other's stories to start with we're asked to say what ours were gonna be so that obviously the publishers could have a proper arc and it would be a good collection and that they then would have to decide what order to put them in but I think we all sat waiting to read each other's stories with as much excitement as we would have done if there'd been a new christie manuscript you know we wanted to see what everybody had come up with yeah of course you did I mean there are there is a good range of murders a nice range of deaths and a lovely range over seasons as well and should we talk a wee bit about your story and then I'm gonna read from your story because your voices are wee bit gone and I'm gonna lovely excuse just to listen to you so set the story up for us and then I'll read the bet that you've asked me to read so funny enough there are lots of parallels between our stories I realised because Miss Marple is visiting an old friend an old school friend Prudence in Sussex we both live in Sussex in a place called Mian Mal Travers which is normally a very well behaved you know small town village small town but on one night every year two weeks after Guy Fawkes night they have their own sort of bonfire night-esque celebration which is very much inspired by I don't know if anyone's been to Lewis um to the bonfire night celebrations but I went and it was I mean you must go I've never gone because it never goes terrifies the idea I find absolutely terrifying it's so you actually went yeah with that long hair you went to Lewis bonfire it is um and we got out we got our position right at the front you know because we wanted to see it all and then it got really kind of feral and wild and people were sort of shoving and pushing and then all these lanterns I mean it was amazing it was wonderful you're such a crime writer you're like I loved it I loved it did you tell them with you or was it were you were you there on your own just no me and my parents but I think they were like our child you know sort of but it's really um pagan you know and and the sort of history goes back centuries and they're really sort of different societies like the bonfire societies um and I think it was actually after the um the processions when sort of everything's got a bit loose and everyone goes to their own bonfire that it felt really fraught you know and there are just sort of bangers going off in the streets and things so I just really wanted to play with that and has this place that you know is this beautiful sort of quaint village very much what we associate I think with the sort of image of Marple image of Agatha Christie and then have it turn really other and dark and sort of feral is that my cue yes I've got the cardinals we're about to bond the pope just for you we're about to bond the pope they have these kind of effigies it's amazing um and they torched Liz Truss this year as well yes yeah and the year I went it was Donald Trump Donald Trump I think and the bomb but um I should also say that Miss Marple and Prudence are doing a very kind of Miss Marple and Prudence thing they're actually going to acquire rehearsal so you know they're this sort of bastion of sort of christian righteousness as Prudence says in the middle of all these sort of pagan goings on and they're they're school friends but they're not the best of friends they're not like you or two friends no it's like school friend but yeah well prudence I mean she's you know she's yeah okay so a few moments later they stepped out into the crisp November air drawing their coats closely about them they were here they were confronted by a stream of masked figures marching past the front door to the house they were like something from a medieval painting demons and fiends come to carry the sinners away the acrid scent of burning paraffin caught at the back of the throat several of them were beating drums all carried lighted torches and several groups had hoisted a loft life-sized papier-mache figures with hideously distorted features oversized heads and bulging eyes clad in the red robes and caps of catholic cardinals there was a strange hum of energy about them it felt dangerous even flammable as though any seconds the very air might ignite miss marple paused staring at once fascinated and repelled prudence beckoned in her head girl manner taking no notice of the throne this way they had to push their way through the crowd several times miss marple felt herself jostled once she could have sworn that a hand reached out to give her a rather hard shove out the way and she struggled to regain her footing it didn't seem to matter a jot to these people that there were two elderly women in their midst she heard the womb of the paraffin torches as they swayed above the masked heads felt the heat of the flames on her cheeks felt a little freeson of disquiet at being caught among these intent anonymous figures who moved as one like a herd or a marauding army i don't understand miss marple said to prudence after they had managed to forward the flood of bodies and were standing on the other side of the road guy fox night was two weeks ago they had a bonfire in the fields by st mary mead dr haydock contributed some roman candles and gazelda clement the vicar's wife produced some sort of spiced wine what was it called something foreign glue vine yes that was it delicious perhaps a touch too much cinnamon of course i didn't stay for long far too cold ah said prudence but they do everything rather differently in me on mal travers a little like the cornish tonight's rebels commemorate not the death of a band of catholic rebels but the emulation of seventeen protestant martyrs at the town cross it's why they burn the cardinals the figurines you know i suppose you could say it's a sort of revenge albeit seven hundred years later sorry several hundred years later revenge said miss marple almost to herself revenge and settling of scores that's another thing one finds a great deal of in small out of the way places well though the score here is so many centuries old it's predominantly the youths of the town that are involved and let me tell you prudence said casting a disapproving eye over the rebels religion has very little to do with it at all in fact it feels rather apt that we should be going to choir practice tonight we will form a bastion of christian righteousness in the midst of these pagan goings on could you always read my it's so lovely reading somebody else's work and getting applause for and not having had to write myself it's just absolutely delicious anyway and it's it's a brilliant story and yet we've got louis in there sort of thinly thinly and she mentions uh miss marple mentions small places and three of your novels have been set in small places a hunting lodge an irish island a paris apartment what is the attraction for you to these confined environments well i love ring fencing my characters you know i'm putting them under the microscope and that's a really fun way of doing it um practically speaking um you kind of close off your circle of suspects so that's quite nice um and convenient different in the paris apartment because obviously i sort of want to have my cake and eat it so i wanted a prising apartment in the middle of this sort of bustling metropolis but i also wanted this sense that when you shut that front gate it's like another world you've entered another world so in this sort of very gothic sense the the apartment block is like this sort of beast swallowing the character's hole it's like another character in the book um but so i love all of that in the first two novels i loved seeing the way in which well no in all three novels actually but i think in the first two especially you have nature red and tooth and claw and you have you're looking at the way in which that sort of infects the characters in the way and brings out sort of something latent and feral in them and i think that's a folk horror like a sort of folk horror and i think that's what i was playing with in in this story you know how does this sort of night change people what does it bring out in you know these normal sort of normally sort of well well behaved law abiding you know towns people who just rub along day to day and again we're in a we're in a village setting so we've got you know class resentments galore assumptions about people obedient maids disobedient maids without giving the plot away tell us a bit more about who else is in the story well yeah i mean i think the um i think the moral of this story is sort of treat um your servants badly actual peril you know it's sort of um so there's oh god i'm trying to think of a way not to spoiler it but there is definitely this sort of let's talk about a vectin first of all shall we yeah who is she so she is a foreigner and i think that's a big part of it so she is newly arrived um in me and my travels uh she's french she's the new choir mistress she's really put noses out of joint because she's sort of she's she's rather beautiful i imagine has been rather beautiful and she's sort of displaced the old choir mistress you know and she's also she's really peed people off for other reasons um you know she she keeps her lights on at night because she's it i mean house is in the middle of the woods really so you know spooky place to be and she's upset the local bird watching society um a very concerned about screech owls screech owls they are um so so all of that but i think the main thing is that she's foreign and so people are sort of deeply suspicious for her and i think that's something that christie was sort of very interested in i mean you look at the character of poirot he's a he's a belgium refugee um originally um and so playing with that sort of otherness but it's so interesting that the collection does that in a way that's very contemporary because i think if you're reading some of the oldest off you're like whoa wait a minute this this is how we're describing people then but of course that's then and this is now but you have to keep her in the then not in the now so you're you're you're thinking about the character in such a way as you know for hard to be perceiving people's insiders and outsiders without rejecting them because of who they are and that's an interesting conundrum as a writer yeah absolutely um i mean i think it's fair to say that there are some fairly dodgy attitudes in some of the sort of i think we should say just just say that and then we can also say she's a wonderful writer so um but you know i think miss marple is very carried forward to this no they're not um but miss marple is very fair in a way she views people i think she's always been very fair and she takes people at face value you know and she listens to the servants and she listens to the people that are sort of on the fringes um and that's really one of her superpowers um so that's something i very much wanted to explore here she looks at who else this woman might have been as well as just being this sort of french choir mistress that sort of swung in with her sort of beautiful bohemian scarfs and all of that did the story come to you as one were you one of the people that the editor of sort of told and you were like yes this is it or did you write your way through it oh no um i mean we had this zoom chat with all of us on the zoom which is so exciting because really really right at the beginning she's so exciting because i mean it was i'm so intimidating because so many of my sort of literary heroes were like right there on the screen um kate uh ellie griffith who i love i'm obsessed with her he talked about um you know women uh breastfeeding in the middle of the night and reading agathagristi that's what i did with ellie griffith's and the roose galloway mysteries just i looked forward to waking up in the middle of the night so i could read a bit more about roose and nelson and all of that um so it was it was wonderful i'm really intimidating and then everyone talked through her stories and they all had a really wonderfully fully formed idea of what they were going to write it's just like i don't think i can swear but you were like sort of saying they're like oh so no um i think at that stage i still very much in the oh i'm really honored to be asked but i don't feel worthy of this i've got to read everything you know every miss marple watch all of the adaptations really enjoy it but also you know try and think my myself into her shoes um and only then did i feel sort of ready to ready to step into her shoes um but when i did the story all came together quite quickly i think um so i find that with short stories i can only ever write the actual short story in quite a short space of time um which might come as a surprise because i think i was the last to deliver as well but i write it quickly no it's art you just create something but i think you well or they just said that to you know get me to i'm interested in in your life before you were a writer i've always been writers but in your life before you watched as a writer you were an editor and i wonder how that affects your writing process the way you the way you approach it i really naively thought it would make me a great editor of my homework and that is infastically not the case um but i think it's given me an understanding of the importance the huge importance of that editorial relationship um i have to say this because my editors on the front row um but no i mean it's so important and really for me i hand in pretty rough first draft and so the book is really built you know in that kind of editing process you know i love writing that sort of messy first draft but it really comes together you know by about draft 17 or whatever it is oh really that many i don't know i mean no 17 i mean mago farrell i once interviewed her and she did 17 draft i think of hamnet um and then of the more recent one you know only needed three but i think she did say something like 16 or 17 so well mago farrell also said this wonderful thing because i'm a really wasteful writer so i write a lot of stuff that doesn't make it into the final doesn't make the final cut and she said this wonderful thing which i found very soothing which is that all of that sort of extra stuff all those darlings you have to kill they need to be there because that's the um scaffolding around hopefully your beautiful edifice that appears when it will fall away no they're necessary necessary part of the process aren't they i mean they might never be published and it's not like they're in a drawer waiting to come out but they've done something to move the story forward and to also make you as a writer feel like actually i didn't waste that waste that day i might have wasted 500 words but i haven't wasted that day because i got i understood something like i understood something absolutely i unlocked something or i solved a puzzle yes in an interview once you said that you didn't ever know who your killer was when you started out and it's so hard to believe when you you know your books are so intricately plotted so how at what point do you do you realise and do you change your mind yeah so with each of the murder mysteries and it happened with this story as well um with each of my murder mysteries i've had a really clear idea of who done it at the beginning and i started writing and then about a third of the way through i suddenly had this sort of light bulb moment and i thought it's not them it's them and that's been such an exciting moment and i kind of live for those moments as a writer and that's actually why i don't you know i plot a little bit but i don't plot too rigidly because i want to i want to have those discoveries along the way yeah and is it the character that reveals themselves to you yes they sort of it's like almost like a little whisper in here they become themselves yes and then therefore they can only behave in character so obviously it couldn't be him it's got to be her yeah because they're all behaving in character once you start to write them they're i really truly understood that for the first time writing it writing an novel the origins of the expression in character and out of character you might want people to do things they're not gonna if you do make them do them it's just gonna the reader's just going to go this is bullshit there's no way that person would do that that's that's not who they are and you've made them who they are so you can kind of try and make them again differently but it's very very hard when you're sort of 300 pages and as i am right now it was a novel and fun i'm always fascinated by that are you a plotter because your books are like that and they're so intricate exactly no but but no so i know the sort of book i'm writing i know the historical backdrop against which it's happening yes and then and i know the kind of characters that are gonna take the story forward and then i start and see where we go really yeah because for me i do three drafts and so the first draft three drafts as a rule like you're like i'm not gonna do anymore that's it yeah absolutely i mean so so it you know the first draft is all in motion it's okay let's write this and i work seven days a week until i've got a draft then i kind of sit back mostly i don't have enough time to sit back because i'm always late and the second draft is all intellect so it's exactly that thing of this character doesn't work that scene is in the wrong place this story isn't delivering anything the mystery is too obscure it's too obvious or you know all of that kind of thing and then the third draft is writing the book because it should have been written in the first place you have to go on that journey i think you have to go on the journey and and also it's like you know in terms of the discovery for me and we were talking about this we're both you know up to the wire girls it's i need the fear of failure in order to access the thing that makes it my book right you know i'm 61 now i have never delivered a book on time and it's just that you know i'm delivering my new novel in 10 days time but yet here i am you're not indeed it won't be the whole novel that's for sure but it's clear that and and i think you are the same aren't you lucy that i have plenty of time to write this novel but it's like until the moment that it's not possible to deliver it on time and then at that moment that level of fear is what helps me access the adrenaline that needs to be on the page is this a new bonding chambers book that's due in 10 it is yes and it's um i've been very flippantly and my publishers keep telling me to stop saying this but um it's basically lesbian pirates it's called the ghost ship um and you know but you know because it's that moment in the sequence where of course of course women disguise themselves as men why wouldn't they oh my god but all the complications that go with that um and there weren't you know lots of female pirates but where there were quite a lot there were enough of them to have hot lesbian sex on the high seas very possibly quite no i'm not gonna say wet and slippery because i was i was thinking of the ship but i realized that would have come out terribly badly um anyway no so i mean and there were you know there were there's lots of evidence of you know the the famous ones are much later than i'm writing bonnie and reid um but you know pirates two women marrying each other and it was completely um there it's all documented and but of course it makes sense doesn't it so but i've read all of this this book has been ready to go for ages but yet yet it's about to be late i mean it it's just every time every single time makes diamonds you know what where are you at where are you at where are you at with your next book about to be late i imagine 10 days time we're gonna bring it not quite in 10 days but pretty soon um december um okay so there we go that's like 20 days or 50 days all right i mean you said in another month so that you make it so much further away that's the difference where we're at yours to me and once yours do oh god that's such a great question thank you for asking is it though see this is why isn't it why i mean partly for me that i admire agatha christie so much the industry has just got on with oh my goodness you know two books a year um 120 how many i don't know hundred no i think 77 novels isn't it 77 i it's embarrassing i know all this 77 novels i mean i think 100 99 100 short stories i mean it gets confusing because of course some of them are renamed and all of that and some of them appear in other forms yeah but i mean but she just did it yeah she just did it didn't make a fuss um you know that all of you you know you can only imagine can't you that campaign you know we've been lucky we've had some campaigns but that whole thing of a christie for christmas um and it was just that inevitable set point of of people's reading life um and you know i admire that enormously that she just didn't there was nothing precious about it reading about horror made me think about walterscot and that absolutely figures who redefined the way publishing happens your waterscot the first writer to get an advance to receive a literary advance and then you know to in that way become a name even though he had behind lots of other names and then you know christie becoming this brand and the christie for christmas and you know the calendar year revolving around the appearance of horror and also you know the you know the story of rider haggard which i i love because i love those old-fashioned adventure stories you and i both share walterscot um as as a person but the idea that you know sitting with his brother on a train and sees this big advertisement i think for i can't remember what it was for maybe for treasure island i can't remember what it was for and you know his brother basically said i bet you can't write a novel like that and he said i bet i can really and then we get king solomon's mind and that one of the great advance written in six weeks i think that you've got time lucy i haven't it was the same with christie that she wrote her first novel because it was um her sister said to her i bet you can't write a detective novel you know i mean it you know so in a way it's double dare isn't it yeah i'm going to take some questions from people online but also from people i'm in the room so let's hope that our ipad um works okay here we go um so question for for all three of you but i'll go we'll go from we'll go from here what do you think is miss marple's most enduring quality i misread that as endearing at first but we'll go for enduring i think that she well i mean lucy said this really that she has a clear moral landscape that you know that whatever she finds out the decision will always be the same she she won't no fear or favor no fear or favor yeah yeah say the same gosh i'm trying to think was it enduring or endearing i think we'll take it either because i misread it so i'm going to say her most endearing quality i think is her sense of humor yeah because she really does even as she sort of underestimated and patronized by those around her there's a sort of almost austin like quality to her i think in the way she sort of deals with these very patronizing men you know these i had a lot of fun with um the inspector uh my short story because he sort of models himself on this sort of noir hero he's a chandler hero he's a chandler hero and chandler was so rude about christian the sort of english you know little quaint murder mystery and things um and she just sort of it's like water of a duck off a duck's back in fact she sort of she uses that to run rings around these people so and i love the i love the humor in them i think that's a really funny moment where the inspector says to her can you hear me madame and she's like yes yes i guess it's such a joke but it's so brilliantly funny and there's also a really good bit in the miss marple takes manhattan story where she's sitting in this american hotel but it's like an american version of the of french furniture so basically like trump tower and she and she just she just can't deal with the hideousness of it anymore and she starts talking to the furniture and then decides that she's gonna go gonna go on a very eventful shopping trip um it's brilliant she's very funny um okay so um here we go question from jill warnuk does it take a woman to write a marple story well this is oh i'm gonna say yeah i think it's yeah i mean i i think i asked that question i don't know if you did i you know i asked yeah i did i wanted to know who else would have been asked because i wanted to feel that it was a diverse group of writers and it would be different but actually i did feel i hope that it's women so i was really pleased about that but do i believe that men can write brilliant women and yeah right brilliant men yes i do i think a writer who is worth her or his salt can write anybody that's true and i i feel that very strongly because it's about imagination yeah imagination coupled with you know creative responsibility and why why why you're doing it but but your coach was in the video at the start there i mean he's a marple super fan and when i told him you know i was i was i was doing this he was like why didn't i get asked to write a story not that it was bitter about it or it isn't anyway waiting under your bed anna after when you get home but like you know but you know of course you went on and he's written his own you know champion it's an absolutely brilliant um world that he's created there but you were seeing earlier the publisher was seeing or there may be another volume and it may it may men may be allowed to write but i think it's brilliant that it's a you know all women yeah and she that that is a very important part of marple yeah i would say that she has fashioned there were so many women who they were essentially told that their lives didn't matter because they were on their own and she is the literary example of i've got a great life you know you know that level of she's very happy yeah so i think i i do think it was the right decision actually you described i think in an interview as a feminist icon or a feminist hero it was you'd hate that though yeah no and this is the thing i think it was slightly tongue in cheek and you know the way these things in print sort of get a little bit twisted um because she's not a feminist she's not a feminist she believes gentlemen need a hard liquor sometimes absolutely but she you know i mean she she tells someone to make sure you look after your husband and cook for him you know and she's a bit disapproving of unmarried mothers you know i mean there are some sort of deeply Victorian traditionalist views um but you know this sort of idea of her kind of superpower being her invisibility all of that she's a woman of that you know all of that there's there's some lovely feminist stuff there even if she herself isn't necessarily and i don't think agatha christie was it was a feminist no we can say that i mean she she practically used to put on forms i i um learned this from lucy wasley's brilliant book about her it's a great book um so good um but she used to when when she was asked to fill in her occupation she would put housewife um but i think there's also a playfulness there and i think there is a marvel as well and also tuna i can't remember the name of the particular short story with one of the you know the murder club stories um when they're all telling the things but the actress jane and at one moment she says we we ladies must stick together yes so she does solidarity yeah yeah i think a gay man would would write a really good miss marple story though for those very reasons that uh miss marple is pretending to be one thing when she's actually another and perhaps um there ought to be a a gay it's an entire volume of i can really see the agatha christie estate going for this i'm totally into it i i'm totally into it i get exactly which is why it's why it's it's it's the whole gaze by novel scene it's why it's so it's so good um so uh a question it's getting going back to acting thinking about who would you have playing miss marple today no if we're having a new marple today i would have because in a pilot because i read an interview with her very recently but i think she's a wonderful um actor and she has that kind of quirky thing i would have ana maxwell martin oh she's great because she would just that's a great show the audience of that that should be really great because she'd kind of be a modern version of slightly independent and outside of the mainstream not bothered about you know miss marple's not bothered about what she looks like and how she behaves she's just is so she'd be mine i would have leslie manville but that because she obviously seems like the younger end of marple in her in her when she was sort of 65 um just because i love her i just think she's wonderful and i've just been watching did i have asked you that question about any character new to go i'd have leslie manville i'd have leslie manville morrow leslie manville she's you know yeah it's just glorious um which is margaret but i've been watching um the adaptation of the magpie murders i've never seen it so anton euro this is brilliant um sort of book within a book murder mystery within a murder mystery actually i think he could make but he could write a great marple but he did write a great an awful lot of the television adaptations were written by aunt yes yes he's had you know homes he's done more reality he's brilliant he's just this amazing ventriloquist yes you know as well as writing his own brilliant sort of but um she in that series you know she's a woman of a certain age who um you know is an unlikely detective um but it's sort of she's she's just brilliant um all right she has an amazing wardrobe we get we get that you love her we get that you love us remember who'd you go for elah i would nominate someone who not everyone will know who's called sarah malin who's a really fantastic actress what was she in she's in she actually is very often a forensic scientist in um murder mystery right um tv series there was one called all that remains right which is really fantastic so she's kind of the person coming up with and she's quite often wearing a white coat and being in the sidelines but she's a really great actor actor and um she's tall and i think she'd get the comic element and the kind of feistyness at the same time you can't beat jones hixon i'd i'd angela lansbury i'm just gonna say again um i would do shavon redmond i know she'd be very good she read yeah um i think she'd be brilliant for obvious reasons um okay so questions from the audience who i realized were rapidly running out of time um uh jenna went there uh person on the end yep you you just wait for the microphone it's gonna get to you yeah thank you you're welcome because miss marples not a chief of police he's not a retired chief of police he's not an aristocrat she kind of starts as an inconvenience then because she becomes a necessity doesn't she is does that inform the structure of the story do you think for miss marples stories that's interesting yes absolutely because she has to she's always there either by invitation or in sufferance um and she doesn't necessarily have access to all the information and that's what's really interesting you mentioned the 450 um from pannington that she's really outside of that story almost all of the story um you know she's just had to put somebody else in place because there's no way that she can get any of the information so it does make um these stories so different from almost every other one of the golden age crime i'm a big fan of nio marsh well i do too i'm a really big fan of dorothy el says i'm a big fan of um josephine tay and marple is different you know because quarrel is a police officer he's retired but he's a police officer and he's still in the system and she's is bizarrely the perennial outsider i love 450 from padding yeah me too i just read it the other day because she's like the spy master yeah thinking about this she's sort of running her agent it's so cool um no i think yeah fascinating question i absolutely agree with kate um you know i think the wonderful thing about her is she she talks to all the people that the police forget you know she's she's there on the edges as you said sort of having these conversations talking to the servants um and there's just something wonderful about that and and and makes it feel really different in terms of texture and it's something i played with uh in my recent novel the paris apartment you know i wanted a character who was like a sleuth in the novel um but is very much not a detective i mean she's got a huge mistrust of the police and sort of very much operates outside the law and doesn't have all the information you know has almost less information than you do as the reader but so she's got a lot stacked against her but still has to sort of survive on her way so it was a fun thing to do it's a fun exercise um hand up here yes at the front or just make the microphones coming to you thank you so much for this evening it's been wonderful discussion um i noted at the beginning you mentioned that agatha christie had written her endings to both paris and marple uh in the second world war uh in just in case something happened to her and i was wondering what what her plan was for later in life if there was a sort of ending that she'd planned and how you guys were uh sort of if you were involved in sort of an end at all for miss marple uh clearly not but that's an interesting question i don't think you said that as part of your rules you weren't allowed to kill her presumably that must have been a rule presumably i was an unwritten rule don't kill her no it's a really interesting question because um the marple that she wrote is much earlier i mean it you know in terms of how old miss marple is and when it probably sits in the sequence it's certainly set in the 30s rather than you know post second world war and so the last marple that christie wrote is nemesis and she's an old woman then and she does what's required of her and that's the end we don't know what happened to marple whereas with a curtain the pariah one she killed him so it is very interesting and that's actually and there's always been a rather not romantic part of me but a sentimental part of me that's thought she didn't want to kill marple no i don't i think she quite enjoyed can i borrow borrow enough now we're done with you we're done with you okay time for one more there's lots and lots of hands up question yes hold on one more second get a microphone to you round there no we'll get a microphone to you there you go it's on its way if i put you in there no pressure on this question no do you think anyone will ever dare to write a marple with dementia well that's a great question insight well i mean they they can't write a marple without permission from the estate i mean so they they could you know and fiction yeah well patricia wentworth did this um the miss silva mysteries are essentially marple i would say um that might be a slightly heretical thing to say i really enjoy them but you know miss silva is a version of miss marple and she clearly decided that she was just going to write her own version and they are really satisfying um and there are many similarities i would say um but i can't imagine well i mean the estate might decide to commission marple continuations but i i don't know i mean why would you do that is what i would feel why would you do that well i mean it's no no i mean it'd be interesting but i mean it kind of take away her agency it would it would but it would be interesting to see that process and to to see her holding on to or not holding on to things i think it's an interesting it's an interesting question to ask it's an interesting exercise yeah um but i mean i wouldn't i would struggle with that i'd be a very hard read i think like elizabeth is missing though i think yes i was just thinking no but it's not that that's not a really important area to write about it really really is but i think it's i think it may be i don't know because i i don't know i mean these guys you know from the publishers know the estate really well and we don't at least i don't um but i think that protection of the person that christie wanted her miss marple to be in the world is really important and if you start to make her vanish which essentially that would be yeah um that would be it would be rather i don't know i i would find that really sad i think actually i i do too i think it would be tragic but really interesting question yeah and i think there are loads of spaces in the stories and in the novels for other adventures for other things to happen whether intentionally left by christie as you know crumbs and breadcrumbs for herself in the future um or you know things that you know crevices that you can kind of um you know push your way into and find new i mean there's a lot of biographical information about marple yeah actually when when you're reading to look for it yes didn't you find that yes there are so many stories that you could tell that uh that christie's put on the page that anybody if any of us were doing continuations you could write a version of a story that christie has hinted at yes there's so many of them and are there already exciting exciting exciting um so i know that you didn't all get to ask your questions if you want to ask some of them on twitter um or in the signing afterwards um please uh please do that i have the names of our competition winners so our online winner is emma taylor so emma please get in touch uh on twitter or on instagram so that we can send you your bundle of lovely things do get a new bookshelf put up for all your marples and our in-room competition winner is alfredo carpignetti so congratulations to alfredo do you want to put your hand up and identify yourself there you go um i do hope i can well ripple of applause for you there for doing nothing other than win and uh you can catch past salons on our podcast um which you can get via you the usual subscription routes or from our website www.theliterarysalon.co.uk you can catch me and Kate blathering away on the big scottish book club which is when i played a lovely time trying to get an award in air two a's with elaine c smacks he's very very very happy she won she really won um i want to thank everyone who's helped make tonight happen it's a lot of people so it's anna hervey and the team at harper collins the agatha christie state the british library and the literary salon team so thank you to all of you as well for being here tonight and to my guests kate moths ellober two and lucy foley and of course miss marple and dame agatha christie good night