Agatha Christie and music

Available for 26 days

Siân Thomas and Tim McInnerny are the readers in a programme marking fifty years since Agatha Christie's death, aged 85, on January 12 1976. In her autobiography, Agatha Christie describes practicing Schumann's The Merry Peasant and Czerny's exercises; appearing with a local family in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeoman of the Guard, which was 'one of the highlights of my existence'; and her hopes of becoming a professional performer after training in Paris. But her 'cherished secret fantasy to do something in music' was ended by her teachers' assessment of her talents, and the stories she had already begun writing became her focus: 'If the thing you want beyond anything cannot be, it is much better to recognise it and go forward, instead of dwelling on one’s regrets and hopes'. Music features in the plots of some her novels from Death on the Nile and A Caribbean Mystery to Hercule Poirot's Christmas, Mrs McGinty's Dead and Elephants Can Remember, and you find in her writing quotations of poetry by Tennyson, Shakespeare, William Blake and nursery rhymes, as well as poetic inspirations for some of her book titles, so this Words and Music celebrates the poetic and musical world of the woman who became known as the 'Queen of Crime'. Producer: Robyn Read Readings from Agatha Christie An Autobiography Shakespeare's Macbeth, Twelfth Night and Othello Elephants Can Remember Hercule Poirot's Christmas Dead Man's Folly They Do It With Mirrors Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott Mrs McGinty's Dead Death on the Nile A Caribbean Mystery William Blake's Song of Innocence Poirot's Last Case