They Came To Baghdad

☆☆☆☆

Reasons for the Poirot Score:

This is a very unusual Agatha Christie. Readers who just want a ‘cosy crime’ Poirot or Miss Marple set in an English rural idyll might be very surprised and disappointed, but please read on.

This is a James Bond thriller, with no sex but more true pent-up erotic passion, and quite a lot of violence, published two years before Ian Fleming’s first book, Casino Royale. One wonders if it gave Mr. Fleming inspiration. Unlike most thrillers it is very well clued, with eight different pieces of information that lead you to the real perpetrator, so you can solve the puzzle before the solution is revealed. The book has some fantastically funny, vivid scenes that would allow this book to be made into a film, set against the exotic backdrop of Baghdad, plus the menace of the Cold War, five years after World War II. I’m thinking Kenneth Branagh could produce and star as Dakin, with Aiden Turner as Carmichael…

Click here for full review (spoilers ahead)

Trivia

Dedicated to ‘All my friends in Baghdad’

Agatha Christie travelled to the Middle East frequently to stay with her husband who was an archaeologist specialising in Mesopotamia.

DFC

Edward had been awarded the DFC during the War. The Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) is the third-level military decoration awarded to personnel of the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force and other services, for “an act or acts of valour, courage or devotion to duty whilst flying in active operations against the enemy”.

‘Sanders of the River’

Sanders of the River is a code in the book. It was a real 1935 British film staring Paul Robeson.

London Telephone Numbers in the 1950s

Before telephone exchanges were fully automated, telephones had a geographic region plus a number. In London this was by area, plus a number. As a child in the 1950s, my home number was ‘Chiswick 1894’, as I proudly answered the telephone. In this book, Victoria says:

‘Pimlico 87693 – one of the Fulham Palace Extensions’

This is an authorial joke. Pimlico is a long way from Fulham Palace, the historic home of the Bishops of London. Any Londoner in the 1950s would know they would be different telephone exchanges, but Victoria was counting on the Americans’ ignorance of local geography. This reference is lost on modern audiences, and anyone who doesn’t know London well.

£sd

The British pound sterling, £, has remained, but in the 1950s before decimalisation, the pound was divided into 20 shillings (s). Each shilling was divided into 12 pence (d).

Arabic Clothing

There are many mentions of Arabic clothing with no description.

Keffiyah :usually a black or red chequered scarf worn around the head and neck

Black silk agal: black cord or rope to keep on Arab headress

White ferwah : a lambskin cloak

Aba: a long piece of clothing

Comus

In Greek Myth Comus is Dionyius’ son, and cup bearer. Comus is the god of excess.

In They came to Baghdad the new ballet is mentioned:

Comus at Sadler’s Wells..Margot Fonteyn danced like a kind of frozen angel.

In Milton’s masque the lady is virtuous and chaste: Fonteyn’s ‘frozen angel’.

Comus was originally a masque written by John Milton in praise of chastity, and performed at Ludlow Castle in 1684.

 Comus was revised for the stage at Drury Lane in 1734 by John Dalton, with music by Thomas Arne. It was a hit for the next seventy years.

Robert Helpmann created the ballet, Comus in 1942, which he danced with Margot Fonteyn. Christie must have seen this spectacular production with Fonteyn still in her twenties.

Dr Alan Breck of Harwell Atomic Institute

 Alan Breck Stewart (c. 1711 – c. 1791) was a Scottish soldier and Jacobite. He was  a central figure in a murder case that inspired novels by Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson. Christie has several different minor characters in various novels as Alan Breck, so she was clearly fond of the name.

Harwell

 The Atomic Energy Research Establishment [ AERE] was founded  near Harwell, Oxfordshire, in 1946. It was the main centre for atomic energy research and development in Britain until the 1990s

Christie mentions the AERE at Harwell in a number of her thrillers. Harwell is in Oxfordshire not far from Wallingford where Christie and Max Mallowan lived.