| Agatha Christie Memorial | |
|---|---|
 The memorial in 2013 | |
 | |
| Artist | Ben Twiston-Davies |
| Year | 2012 |
| Medium | Bronze |
| Subject | Agatha Christie |
| Dimensions | 2.4 m(7.9 ft) |
| Location | London |
| 51°30′42″N0°07′39″W / 51.511805°N 0.127387°W | |
| Website | Official website |
The Agatha Christie Memorial is a memorial to author and playwright Agatha Christie, located at the intersection of Cranbourn Street and Great Newport Street by St Martin's Cross near Covent Garden, in London, United Kingdom.
The memorial is located in the heart of London's theatre district. This was chosen to pay homage to Christie's contribution to theatre: her 1952 murder mystery play The Mousetrap is the world's longest-running show, and she was the first female playwright to have three plays performing simultaneously in the West End. [1]
The memorial depicts a book with Christie at its centre. It is about 2.4 metres high and made of bronze. It is lit from below as well as from within. [2] An inscription on the front reads: Agatha / Christie / 1890–1976. [3] It was designed by sculptor Ben Twiston-Davies. [2] [4]
The idea to create this memorial was conceived and implemented by Christie's grandson Mathew Prichard together with Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen, producer of The Mousetrap since 1994. [2] Westminster City Council gave formal consent and offered advice on its construction. [2] Although a bust of Christie had already been erected in Torquay, Devon, this was the first memorial to be erected in London, according to Twiston-Davies. [1] The memorial was unveiled on 25 November 2012, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of The Mousetrap .
On the memorial appear some titles of her most popular books and plays, in English, and in some of the many languages into which Christie's work has been translated. The titles included were chosen in a competition among her fans. [2] The details of the inscriptions can be seen on the official website. [2]
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.
Miss Jane Marple is a fictional character in Agatha Christie's crime novels and short stories. Miss Marple lives in the village of St. Mary Mead and acts as an amateur consulting detective. Often characterized as an elderly spinster, she is one of Christie's best-known characters and has been portrayed numerous times on screen. Her first appearance was in a short story published in The Royal Magazine in December 1927, "The Tuesday Night Club", which later became the first chapter of The Thirteen Problems (1932). Her first appearance in a full-length novel was in The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930, and her last appearance was in Sleeping Murder in 1976.
Covent Garden is a district in London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and with the Royal Opera House, itself known as "Covent Garden". The district is divided by the main thoroughfare of Long Acre, north of which is given over to independent shops centred on Neal's Yard and Seven Dials, while the south contains the central square with its street performers and most of the historical buildings, theatres and entertainment facilities, including the London Transport Museum and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
The Mousetrap is a murder mystery play by Agatha Christie. The Mousetrap opened in London's West End in 1952 and ran continuously until 16 March 2020, when the stage performances had to be temporarily discontinued during the COVID-19 pandemic. It then re-opened on 17 May 2021. The longest-running West End show, it has by far the longest run of any play in the world, with its 28,915th performance having taken place as of November 2022. Attendees at St Martin's Theatre often get their photo taken beside the wooden counter in the theatre foyer. As of 2022 the play has been seen by 10 million people in London.
The Ambassadors Theatre, is a West End theatre located in West Street, near Cambridge Circus on Charing Cross Road in the City of Westminster. It is one of the smallest of the West End theatres, seating a maximum of 444, with 195 people in the dress circle and 251 in the stalls.
West End theatre is mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres in and near the West End of London. Along with New York City's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. Seeing a West End show is a common tourist activity in London. Famous screen actors, British and international alike, frequently appear on the London stage.
Seven Dials is a road junction and neighbourhood in the St Giles district of the London Borough of Camden, within the greater Covent Garden area in the West End of London. Seven streets of the Seven Dials area converge at the roughly circular central roundabout, at the centre of which is a column bearing six sundials – with the column itself acting as the seventh sundial.
Sophie Thompson is a British actress who has worked in film, television and theatre. A six-time Olivier Award nominee, she won the 1999 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for the London revival of Into the Woods. Her other nominations were for Wildest Dreams (1994), Company (1996), Clybourne Park (2011) Guys and Dolls (2016) and Present Laughter (2019).
Anne Reid is a British stage, film and television actress, known for her roles as Valerie Barlow in the soap opera Coronation Street (1961–1971); Jean in the sitcom dinnerladies (1998–2000); and her role as Celia Dawson in Last Tango in Halifax (2012–2020) for which she was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress. She won the London Film Critics' Circle Award for British Actress of the Year and received a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in the film The Mother (2003).
Florence Avril Angers was an English stand-up comedian and actress. The Daily Telegraph described her as "one of the most zestful, charming and reliable character comediennes in the postwar London theatre".
Murder Most Foul is the third of four Miss Marple films made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Loosely based on the 1952 novel Mrs McGinty's Dead by Agatha Christie, it stars Margaret Rutherford as Miss Jane Marple, Charles Tingwell as Inspector Craddock, and Stringer Davis as Mr Stringer. The story is ostensibly based on Christie's novel, but notably changes the action and the characters. Hercule Poirot is replaced by Miss Marple and most of the other characters are not in the novel.
Blyth Festival, is a theatrical festival, located in the village of Blyth, Ontario, Canada, which specializes in the production and promotion of Canadian plays.
Ecstasy is a 1979 play by British playwright Mike Leigh with a six-character cast. It covers the life of four blue-collar friends living in a ratty area of London near Kilburn High Road and the drunken frustration in their lives, particularly that of the lead character Jean.
Sir Peter Saunders was an English theatre impresario, notable for his production of the long-running Agatha Christie murder mystery, The Mousetrap.
And Then There Were None is a 1943 play by crime writer Agatha Christie. The play, like the 1939 book on which it is based, was originally titled and performed in the UK as Ten Little Niggers. It was also performed under the name Ten Little Indians.
And Then There Were None is a mystery novel by the English writer Agatha Christie, described by her as the most difficult of her books to write. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939, as Ten Little Niggers, after an 1869 minstrel song which serves as a major plot element. The US edition was released in January 1940 with the title And Then There Were None, taken from the last five words of the song. Successive American reprints and adaptations use that title, though American Pocket Books paperbacks used the title Ten Little Indians between 1964 and 1986. UK editions continued to use the original title until 1985.
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) was an English crime novelist, short-story writer and playwright. Her reputation rests on 66 detective novels and 15 short-story collections that have sold over two billion copies, an amount surpassed only by the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare. She is also the most translated individual author in the world with her books having been translated into more than 100 languages. Her works contain several regular characters with whom the public became familiar, including Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, Parker Pyne and Harley Quin. Christie wrote more Poirot stories than any of the others, even though she thought the character to be "rather insufferable". Following the publication of the 1975 novel Curtain, Poirot's obituary appeared on the front page of The New York Times.
Jacinta John is an Australian actress, producer and director. She is best known for her performance as Miss Casewell in the (2012–2013) 60th anniversary tour of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, which played to an audience of over 150,000 people across Australasia.
See How They Run is a 2022 comedy mystery film directed by Tom George, written by Mark Chappell and produced by Damian Jones and Gina Carter. The film stars Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody, Ruth Wilson, Reece Shearsmith, Harris Dickinson and David Oyelowo.
Media related to Agatha Christie Memorial, London at Wikimedia Commons
