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

All About Agatha Christie

Catherine Brobeck & Kemper Donovan

Arts, Books, Tv & Film, Film Reviews

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. BBC Maestro's Agatha Christie course On Writing can be found here. To visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page, click here. Loose Lips, the second book in my Ghostwriter Mysteries series, is currently available for purchase. You can also buy The Busy Body, the first book in my Ghostwriter Mysteries series, in paperback at your bookseller of choice (make it an indie if you possibly can) in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia and New Zealand. Visit the podcast on Instagram, and me personally at my author website.

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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