Agatha

Came across a biography of Agatha Christie in the library the other day. By one Laura Thompson who claimed support of the family trust, access to letters and such like. Well worn despite the near blank lending slip in the front - made obsolete by the self checkout arrangements, in place for as long as I can remember. So all in all, I thought lots of people have taken it out, so must be worth a borrow.

As it turned out, rather a rambling sort of book, wandering backwards, forwards and around the life of Agatha's life and works, with quite a lot of space given to quotes from the latter. Not a book for someone who has not read and enjoyed a lot of the books, although it is an interesting life, which would make a good subject for a more regular biography - but perhaps the family were not having that, blocking access to everyone except someone prepared to do it their way. Part of the interest being seeing how some of the features of her upbringing reverberate through her marriages and the lives of her descendants.

We learn also how much of Agatha's own life finds its way into the books, rather flat and one dimensional though they are, leaving aside the more obviously autobiographical books written under the Westmacott flag, of which I have no direct experience. All kinds of agnathan life, times and thoughts find their way into the mouths of Miss. Marple, Poirot and the all the rest of them.

I share one snippet. I cannot presently find the quote, from  Miss. Marple, but it goes along the lines of don't knock gossip. Ladies are interested in the social and family doings of humans and make a life time study of them. Old ladies have all the time in the world to mull them over, sometimes out loud in company. As a result they know a lot about people and one can learn a lot from them. Provided, I think to myself, that you make proper allowance for motive, cattiness and spite.

And one factlet. Agatha wrote a mystery set in ancient Egypt, drawing on what she learned from her second husband and his archaeological doings. I find the book beyond me, but I was interested to read in the author's note at the front about the Egyptian calendar. So the Egyptian year was made up of three seasons, with each season made up of four months of thirty days, all geared to the annual cycle of the Nile. Plus five intercalary days at the end to make up numbers. Perhaps these days were given over to holidays and bacchanalia. But they did not do anything about the odd quarter day, so after a while - quite a lot of centuries that is - the month which was supposed to mark the flood was a long way off target. I found it very odd that with all their calendrical sophistication they did not get around to leap years, that they did not find it a bit odd that the month of the flood fell in the month of the drought. Perhaps this was a mystery which helped keep the priests in business.

Which reminds me of some law of history which I once came across, a law which states that the established church will usually manage to get its paws on one third of the wealth of a country. Churches tend to grow until the forces for growth are balanced by the push back from the rest of the population, leading one to the magic number of three.