Agatha and Me: Inside A Life of Crime

Val McDermid, Ruth Ware and Steph McGovern are coming to The British Library on Thursday 4 February 2027 to talk about Agatha Christie. They'll be joined by Stuart Maconie, who'll be chairing the conversation. It's part of the library's Literature at the Library series, and it runs alongside the exhibition Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery, which is the largest show dedicated to the 'Queen of Crime' in the UK in nearly a quarter-century.

The timing isn't accidental. The exhibition marks the fiftieth anniversary of Christie's death in 1976, as well as the centenary of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, published in 1926. Rather than a chronological walk-through, the display is split into five immersive zones that trace the worlds that shaped Christie's imagination: an English country house; a World War I medical dispensary at the Torquay Red Cross hospital, where she learned about poisons; an Orient Express train car; an archaeological dig site reflecting her life with her second husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan; and London's West End theatre.

There are more than a hundred objects on display, and a few of them are the kind of things you don't usually see from a writer. Her 1937 Remington typewriter is there, alongside the typescript of House of Beauty, the first short story she wrote as a teenager. There are also rare photographs of her in Egypt, South Africa and Libya in 1955, and one of her surfing in Honolulu in 1922.

The talk starts at 19:00 at The British Library on Euston Road, and tickets are £30. It's a good chance to hear three modern crime writers talk about the woman who practically invented the genre, and if you're in town, you can pair it with the exhibition itself.