Interview with Dr. Mark Aldridge, Project Research Lead for BBC Maestro's Agatha Christie Writing Course

All About Agatha Christie

Catherine Brobeck & Kemper Donovan

Tv & Film, Books, Film Reviews, Arts

4.7 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There's a decent chance you've heard about the recent online course put out by BBC Maestro, in which a digitally manipulated representation of Agatha Christie teaches the craft of writing a mystery. Yes, really! I was fortunate enough to sit down with the person responsible for all the research that went into this quite heavily researched project: Dr. Mark Aldridge. As many longtime listeners will know, Mark has been a guest here many times, and his appearance on this episode was just as enjoyable and informative as what we've come to expect of him. Let's get into it.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to All About Agatha, the podcast dedicated to reading and ranking, every single mystery novel written by the Queen of Crime, Dame Agatha Christie.
0:14.6	I am Kemper Donovan, and I have quite the interview episode for you today, listeners.
0:24.1	My guest today is no stranger to the All About Agatha podcast. Dr. Mark Aldridge has been coming onto this show since the very beginning. I believe
0:31.6	my co-host, Catherine Brobeck, and I first had him on to discuss the many adaptations of murder on the
0:37.3	Orient Express,
0:38.6	and it was our pleasure, and then my pleasure, to invite him back again and again and again.
0:46.5	As many of you know, Mark is a professor.
0:48.8	The associate professor of screen history is at Southampton, Solent University University in the United Kingdom, to be exact.
0:55.5	He is the author of three books currently, all of them's significant contributions to the world
1:00.8	of Agatha Christie scholarship, 2016's Agatha Christie on screen, 22's Agatha Christie's Poirot,
1:07.1	the greatest detective in the world, and 2024's Agatha Christie's Marple, expert on wickedness.
1:13.8	And he is the co-host, along with Gray Robert Brown, of the outrageously engaging and informative
1:18.9	podcast, The Swinging Christies, all about Agatha Christie in the 1960s. And indeed,
1:24.4	Mark's most recent appearance here was a crossover episode between our two podcasts,
1:29.0	because that is the world we live in now, in which podcasts cross streams, as it were.
1:34.1	But I will be speaking to Mark about none of these endeavors today.
1:39.1	Apparently, all of the above simply wasn't enough to keep Mark the busy agathologist quite busy enough because he
1:46.0	went and got himself involved in another project, which is the creation of a writing course by
1:52.2	BBC Maestro, in which Agatha Christie herself, or at least a likeness of Agatha Christie,
1:58.3	more on this later, so very much more, teaches the tricks of her
2:01.7	trade, the craft of writing a mystery. This is probably something you've heard about because it made
2:07.2	quite a splash when it was announced a few weeks ago. The course is now live, and I want to let you
	...

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