Exhibition at the Royal Pump Room Museum marking the centenary of Agatha Christie's mysterious disappearance in Harrogate in 1926.
Agatha Christie: A Harrogate Mystery opens at the Royal Pump Room Museum on Saturday 28 November, and it's one that's been a long time coming. The exhibition marks the centenary of the moment the best-selling novelist of all time vanished from the face of the earth for eleven days, and it's held right here in the town where she turned up.
To get the full picture, you have to go back to December 1926. Following her mother's death and her husband's confession of an affair, Christie left her Surrey home on 3 December. Her car was later found dumped near Newlands Corner, which sparked a national manhunt that pulled in more than 1,000 police officers, volunteers, reporters and even aviators. While the search was on, she'd travelled to Harrogate and checked into the Swan Hydro under the assumed name Teresa Neele — borrowing the surname of her husband's mistress. That's where she was eventually found. The Swan Hydro is now the Old Swan Hotel, so the whole thing is rooted in the local streets.
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If you want to get in early, there's a launch night on Friday 27 November from 5pm to 7pm, and then the exhibition runs from Saturday 28 November right through to May 2027, so there's plenty of time to fit it in if you can't make the opening weekend. It's at the Royal Pump Room Museum on Crown Place, right in the heart of town.
