The Hello and welcome to the Swinging Christie's, The Christie Time podcast about Agatha Christie in the swinging 60s.

I'm Doctor Mark Aldridge.

I'm an associate professor and I've written a lot about Agatha Christie, including my brand new book, Agatha Christie's Marple Expert on Wickedness, which is still out now.

Yes, and I'm Grey Robert Brown.

I'm a writer and I pledge allegiance to the good cause of Agatha Christie.

Mrs Christie's gone to Washington.

Dr Aldridge has gone with her, and Mr.

Brown has gone with her as well.

We are in Washington.

DC, oh, in Washington.

DC so exciting.

I've never been.

You've been twice.

I've been to ICF for research both times.

Yes, yes.

And we're actually sat outside one of the buildings at the Library of Congress.

Yeah.

Well, it was between the two main ones, actually.

Really, aren't we?

Yeah, yeah.

So part one of our American Odyssey.

If that's not too grand a a term, no, it might.

Slightly be I don't think it is.

2 starts makes an odyssey.

I don't think it is.

I think it's the Route 66 that we've done, AKA the Amtrak between New York and DC.

Yeah.

So part one of our American Odyssey, I'm gonna go there again was from New York City.

That's in your podcast feeds now, dear listener.

And this is Part 2, Washington, DC.

It is.

We've got lots to explore.

Yeah, yeah.

Very excited.

Started let's.

So here we are.

Yes, down the mall.

Mall.

I was just thinking it's mall or mall because it's Oh dear, We're getting lots of other people's photos, but I think you're doing that where they are.

They're getting.

In our podcast, that's really true.

Yeah.

So yeah, we we're just sort of traversing the the Mall in, in Washington, DC, which runs from the capital all the way down.

To all the way down to the Lincoln Memorial.

Yes, with a with a sojourn around the Washington Memorial in the middle as well.

We're just passing the fountain.

That's probably what you can hear in the background.

Passing the memorial.

And and then it's the reflection pool.

Yeah, it's all very beautiful.

It's a lovely sunny day.

So why have you brought us to DC, Mark?

Why?

Why was Doctor Mark Aldridge?

Why was DC on the on the itinerary?

So a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I like DC that that helps, you know, obviously there's the big political centre, but that's not really the reason.

The reason is that the Library of Congress is here.

So for another project, but also us, I wanted to look at some magazines sat on to the British Library, some American magazine publications of Agatha Christie stories.

So we've made sure we've looked at some 1960s ones, all the ones that we could.

And also because we're so big on context, I was like, if we're going to go to the East Coast of America, we really should go to some of the big museums to sort of, I guess I mean like the American history of America, because obviously we're British.

And so really what are we?

I will as as the our service said last night, they're so British.

British.

She didn't realise I was hearing how she walked and she said to her colleague.

And then she thought you were going to run without.

Pain she did, literally.

As I as I left the restroom, she was stood outside waiting for me to pay.

So got a clearly suspicious of the Brits.

Maybe rightly so.

I do, yeah.

Oh, right.

But yeah, you're right.

Because the, the, the great thing about a bit about seeing the magazines in which Agatha Christie stories appeared as they did throughout the 1960s is as you pointed out, the the historical, socio political, cultural context is, is all around those stories.

And we're really interested in kind of, yeah, yeah, just sort of verifying it from a natural American perspective, but also going back to the original sources, the primary sources, which obviously we're big on.

And yeah, so we went to the Smithsonian Museum.

Of American history.

History we may or may not have got in the wrong one initially.

Yeah.

The Natural History of museum.

Yeah, we were like, are we going to see dinosaurs?

I don't think we're going to see dinosaurs.

This wasn't quite what.

We were intending no.

But yeah, they've got a few lovely 60s exhibits which all kind of reinforced our perception of America in the period, I think.

Yeah, the first one that I saw being and I'll post a picture of this on our socials.

But is it Mary Wilson?

Mary.

Oh, yes, yes.

Supreme gown, not Diana Ross's gown, but Mary was I actually rang in advance and said please don't exhibit anything from Diana Ross because Mark will never let me live with that.

So when I hear you, they were like I hear you.

We're going to swap it out from Mary Wilson, gown and said.

So they did play Stop in the Name of Love in the.

They did.

They did.

They did.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

Yellow, yellow gown.

And next to that was an exhibit about counterculture.

I think it bears repeating that a lot of the time when we talk about things like the Summer of Love and LSD and, yeah, the whole kind of countercultural movement that really was being led by America, specifically on the West Coast.

Yeah.

You know, it filtered through to to London and to Berlin and many other places.

But really the the epicentre of that kind of hippie movement in particular was California.

Yeah.

And thirdly, there was a display of costumes from Phyllis Diller's tour of Vietnam, obviously acknowledging the Vietnam War, which sadly ran for a long time into the 70s.

But that's a big, big historical backdrop that Christie is writing with.

I think there are definitely grounds to say that some of the turmoil in Passenger to Frankfurt is inspired by the horrors of Vietnam.

Definitely.

Passenger to Frankfurt is a stand alone espionage thriller about Sir Stafford Nye's hunt for answers from 1970.

Definitely.

The whole thing about student protests and stuff that go hand in hand with that, yeah, It's all tied in together.

Definitely yes.

And also I mean specifically as well.

I remember learning years ago in history lessons that one of the reasons why the the horrors of the Vietnam War really hit home was because it was the first televised war.

So it's the first war where people would have seen on the news images of what was really happening.

Yes, and directly.

You know, not in the cinema before a film, not with a bit of a remove.

Yeah, time.

Because.

Yeah.

And also, yeah, there you'd have that with newsreels and stuff.

They would be general about the general movement of the war.

Yeah, not about what happened today.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think it's important to acknowledge that even having said that, it still wouldn't be quite so immediate as it is today.

Yeah.

And also I think the news, I think it's fair to say we've, we've both scoured newspapers for research purposes over the years.

I think it's fair to say that the emphasis on a globalised perspective and international news has increased since then.

Yeah.

So I think it's also important to take with a pinch result just how much Christie would have been aware of American politics, American culture, American history going on.

Having said that, as we talked about in Part 1 in New York, she came here.

She came here several times.

And specifically in 1966, she came to DC specifically did yes, on that tour.

And yeah, there are a few mentions as we're here.

There are a few specific Washington mentions in Passenger to Frankfurt.

It's not always apparent which one she's talking.

No, no, I think she uses it as a sort of general term for sort of American politics and the American government, doesn't she?

It says Washington.

Yes, you're right.

There is talk of in the in the slightly dystopian, slightly imaginary Fantasia world of passengers to Frankfurt, There is talk of Washington being razed to the ground and burned out in amongst the chaos, presumably protests.

And Washington, DC was and you know, remains a major site of, as you said, it's the seat of power in this country.

It makes sense.

And Speaking of, we're looking at right now the steps up to.

The Lincoln Memorial, Yeah.

Which is famously the site of Martin Luther King's I have a dreams.

Yes, of course, a major, major figure in the 1960s and and now.

You know, and well, yeah, of course.

And the civil rights movement is big chapter of 1960s American history.

It definitely had influences across the pond as well and would absolutely have been something that Christie, as a avid newspaper reader, would have been aware of.

And there are, you know, there are things like James Bulbin, the African American author, coming to Cambridge in the 60s and lecturing about civil rights.

So even if we're saying, you know, was Christie always fully cognizant of all world politics, well, it was very much coming to the doorstep in Great Britain as well in his time.

But yeah, it's quite amazing to see, to see where he actually stood so.

Yes, I think it's time for us to climb the steps, actually, and go and say hello to President Lincoln.

Let's do.

That and then tomorrow we're off to the Library of Congress and see what we can discover in terms of Agatha Christie's periodicals.

Love a library?

The periodicals of Agatha Christie.

So we're back from the Library of Congress and the Madison Library was it?

Yes, yes, Madison building.

Yes, Madison building.

Yeah.

Incredible.

Loads of interesting things we saw there, stuff that will influence future episodes.

In fact, I think it's fair to say, but in particular we were looking at Agatha Christie serialisations in American magazines, yes.

That's it.

So this is one of the first things when we were thinking about going to America, America that I said would be really good because these aren't all held at the British Library.

And as I've said before, lots of these stories would be published in magazines first.

And that is actually where you'd make a lot of your money in the short term as an author and an agent.

And what I think is really interesting is how overlooked this is now, because this is how a lot of people would have consumed these stories in the 1960s.

So I thought I, I actually needed copies of some of these for another project, but I thought at the same time, let's have a look at actually how these stories were presented to readers, like what the contexts are, what other articles are in, in these magazines, What sort of adverts are there?

So we're going to do a bit of a whistle stop tour about some of the highlights because I think some of this we might come back to at other points.

And definitely some of it we're going to come back to in our Torquay talk in September this year.

Still available.

You get a glass of fizz with ours.

Honestly, what can you want?

Is it fizz?

I thought?

It was a cocktail.

Or either or or both.

It is.

I don't know, I.

Don't know, I'm just propagating fake news now to get people through the door.

Yes, none of this is actually I'll.

Give you 25 lbs listening if.

You.

If you can't.

See us.

So yeah.

So I thought we'd go through these.

So the first one in because we're going to go through the Marauder.

Cat among the pigeons then.

Cat Among the Pigeons is a Poirot novel about the murder of a games mistress at a girls school from 1959.

This is Ladies Home Journal in November 1959.

Cover articles include Can you keep your child from whining?

Pretty fashions for a governor's wife on a budget.

What sort of budget has a governor's wife got?

But let's not worry too much about that, Governor.

Is in like a prison, no?

I think, as in a state governor, when orange blossoms fade, sex and religion.

Tell me, doctor, when did Labour be induced?

How did Mr and Mrs Rockefeller live?

Oh my God, Rockefeller.

How much is that coming up?

We had to sit through a bit of Rockefeller propaganda in order to go to the top of the Rockefeller building.

Yeah, take a nice photo.

Which?

You did you and that's the photo on Instagram.

Do check it out with Chrissy underscore time over there, but they make you but not even we weren't even allowed to sit.

You have to stand and watch this film.

Yes, yeah, all about.

The great girl I thought we were.

Gonna have to salute by the end.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was quite.

Bizarre, but I mean, yeah, lovely view from the top of this building, I'll give him that.

So it was a condemned version of the story.

This is quite common in some of the magazines by this time that they didn't serialise it.

A couple of nice things about this.

Firstly, there's a lovely illustration which we'll post on our social media with little cat eyes and stuff.

But also, there is a special introduction on the contents page to Agatha Christie.

I'm going to read it all out because I think it's sweet and it's got a nice little quote from her.

So we're told that Agatha Christie is a tall, sophisticated English woman who is so shy she is personally almost as much a mystery as her fictional creations.

She is the wife of Max Mallowan, an archaeologist, and usually spends four months a year on digging expeditions.

She has had 60 novels published in the United States.

More than 60 million copies have been sold, and she has written 12 plays, one of which, The Mousetrap, has the longest run in British theatrical history.

So funny to hear that from something that's like 65.

Yeah, six years.

Old There was a note in one of the archives that we looked at in New York that said if the mousetrap carries on as it is and it shows no sign of letting up, and it was only, it was from like 60 something.

And I was like, oh, how it was.

It would have been the late 60s.

But this is one of the big things when Christmas Pudding came out was that originally Edmund Corker suggested Three Blind Mice, the short story, and Christie said, well, I know that, you know, whatever it was, 1/4 of a million people have seen it.

But that's quite a lot of the world who haven't still seen it.

In her first novel, she created her Que Poirot, the Belgian detective who returns to solve the crime crimes in Cat Among the Pigeons.

She starts on page 66, her personal report to the Journal.

I am passionately fond of cooking, interested in interior decorating and anything to do with houses.

I collect papier mache furniture and take enormous pleasure in flower arranging.

I agree with the Chinese that the years between 60 and 70 are some of the best in one's life.

What a lovely, upbeat little sort of snapshot of her life.

And like you said when you discovered it, I think it's amazing that all these years later, we're still rediscovering little bits of words from Christian.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Yeah.

So.

So that we should never.

Take those for granted.

Definitely not.

And I found one the other day.

So I said to you a new interview, Ladies Home Journal.

Then clearly quite upmarket.

You know you're the governor's wife, but you're on a budget and things about religion, not that.

Upmarket because.

Those.

Magazines have no budget, Yeah.

And also, can you keep your child from whining?

The answer might be give it to the nanny.

Yes, exactly.

If it were truly upmarket, Exactly.

Next up then, because there's no nothing for adventure crisis of putting us on that's not published in America.

So that leads us to the Pale Horse.

The Pale Horse is a stand alone novel that explores mysterious goings on and unexplained deaths at a countryside inn from 1961.

Yeah, so this was again Ladies Home Journal in April 1962 and.

Even looking at the cover, the big articles inside the exciting world of fashion and how to help adolescents understand sex in three years, it feels like that's moved on from the governor's wife a little bit.

Although there's still, You're never too old to look young, which can be true for any of us.

Yeah.

I think what what what maintains and indeed is a common theme throughout all of these is that there's a very particular niche of journalism that's directed towards women, which is very middle class, is very based around childcare, supporting a household in terms of the emotional labour and the in a wifely and maternal fashion.

That it's in a way it's kind of a sobering reminder because obviously when we talk about sex and gender in the 60s, like we did in way back in episode 1, the temptation is to make it sound like everything was changing.

But of course, the sadly, the kind of housewifey myths still very much survived held true.

And these magazines are a bit of a testament to that things.

Are still circling back to that no matter where you go, it still comes back to win as a wife and mother.

Yes, it's interesting that on the contents page, the little blurb about the Christie story very much plays down the spooky supernatural aspect to it.

Which is what what most people who love that book love about the book now and plays up the romance element.

So it says Miss Christie has been practising the art of covering up, meaning covering up murders for a mentionable number of years.

The Pale Horse is a mystery dashed with romance and introduces a new approach to doing away with and doing away and with are capitalised, which is a new a new way of putting it.

It's almost a it's almost a Western and, and but by that I mean cowboy type typeface that the pale horse has.

Well, that's certainly the the impression it gives me with that sort of bolted on yellow almost circus effect of the title in this one.

And a common with quite a few of these, the the illustration doesn't look out of step with the sorts of covers that Tom Adams was designing famously for Christie.

Not the last time we'll mention to him because he's going to pop up again in a minute.

Oh really?

Well, and.

Would you say it's standard that it seems to me that it's standard that there would be that there's one commissioned illustration at the start of the serialisation and then any visuals you see for the rest of the serialisation are ads or cartoons or something that that's it in terms of the story.

Absolutely.

Yes, the way that it goes, yeah, yeah.

Now we're going to skip over the Mirror Cracked, because that wasn't picked up for a serialisation by one of these major magazines because of issues about it perhaps not being great for their female readers who perhaps aren't going to like aspects of the story, and also partly because some of the editors felt that it was a little too easy to solve.

So that brings us on to the clocks.

The Clocks is a Poirot novel about espionage and an unidentified body from 1963.

Yeah, so Cosmopolitan magazine this time in January 1964, so a few months after The Clocks was first published in the UK.

And one of the most striking things I think about this edition.

It's got.

But you call them headlines of the of the articles that are included Straplines.

Yeah, they're all, they're stripped across the front in landscape and they they've all got different and quite a swinging font colour each, each line has got a different colour and.

They're very focused on popular culture.

Our our cover star is Richard Chamberlain, who is famous, famous for many things, but for playing Doctor Kildare on television, who many years later came out as gay.

And so the idea is that he is, you know, he's the dinner date for this one.

And who needs a husband when you've got Doctor Kildare on TV?

There are ways that you might want to unpack that.

But perhaps not quite for this episode.

But he was very much a sort of matinee idol.

He was someone who, you know, seemed to be the housewives choice, I guess.

Yes.

Well, yeah, he, he, he was their choice.

It's just they were choosing incorrectly.

Yeah, I mean, the other cover stars of, of course, the new Angela Christie novel, which is stripped across the bottom.

And just above that, it says Alfred Hitchcock's Blood Money, which is an.

Interview about What does Alfred Hitchcock do with his blood money?

In other words, he keeps killing people off and but he doesn't do it that much.

I mean.

The same could be said of Christie.

Yes, they could have made it a combined article.

Yeah, the clock's typeface is hot pink.

It's the pink, actually, the typeface that the clock's title is in.

It's the pink of our podcast art.

In fact, it is with a with a purple trim around it.

Yeah.

This one has got an extra illustration sort of halfway through, but they're quite abstract.

We've got the cats, we've got the orange cat if you flip a few pages on SO.

Oh yeah.

Oh yes, yeah, the fashionable scarf, which turned out to be not a scarf at all, but one of many cats.

Beautifully.

Depicted on there, yeah.

Quite surrealist, this illustration.

Which feels.

Very of a piece with with contemporary art of this period.

Also I like the byline before it begins.

It says clearly it was a case for the world's most famous detective, Hercule Poirot.

There were three murder victims, 4 mysterious clocks, and a frightened girl who obviously wasn't telling everything she knew.

I mean, more if you squint and take out the bit about the clocks, that's it's kind of a description of Third Girl.

And it's very much written in quite a pulpy way in the, in the way that the Collins blurbs are not written at this time, you know?

I think the only other illustration in this is a slightly almost fetishistic picture of a of a leg with a height the high heel snapping, but you can see the top of the stocking in the leg as well.

It's it's Oh, I.

Haven't seen.

Yeah, it's a few.

That page is on.

Oh yeah.

So it's like a lovely outline of a single leg with a that's very striking.

Isn't it right in the middle of the page?

Yeah.

Because, as we say, often it's it's just ads or it's at best it's a satirical cartoon about something completely different, which is one of the things we were really struck by.

Is is how you're you know, we know that people's eyes, readers eyes were darting from Miss Martindale or or from Toppins barefed to this other content.

And what might that?

How might that influence their perception of the story?

A Caribbean mystery again, not in one of these big magazines, partly because of time pressure, but also because I think there's one.

This is one of the ones where I remember somebody saying one of the correspondents, I really liked it and I just can't convince my editor to pick it up.

So this still wasn't poorly received by any means.

It just sometimes you get unlucky.

So no.

A Caribbean mystery for this, I guess.

It depends on the timing as well and what else they have coming in this.

Is often so, so often thing, and there are a few where they go.

We've got another mystery serial going at this point, so we don't want this one as well.

Yeah.

So that means our next one is Bertram's Hotel.

At Bertram's Hotel is a Miss Marple novel set in a London hotel which is not quite what it seems from 1965.

In Good Housekeeping, Yeah, maybe.

There was a perception that, I mean, it's wrong, but maybe there was a perception that Caribbean mystery was slightly below par.

And indeed, the clocks, too, because this headline on Good Housekeeping is Agatha Christie, her best new novel in years.

Yes.

Yeah, the most frustrating thing about this cover, which got a sort of blonde model on.

Oh, narrow it down.

Half of them have got yeah.

Model on them.

But the really frustrating thing is that it's got an interview with Julie Andrews who say called all the things I love most rather than my favourite things.

Can you believe they didn't call it my favourite things?

The other sort of things that we've got in this issue, and apart from Julie Andrews, it's a beauty chic, upholstered furniture, My problem, stubborn husband, all sorts of keep up with medicine.

Every day is Mother's Day and there's shocking shortage of nurses and some of the nicest people are superstitious.

So I think it'd be fair to say a very diverse range of articles that we get in Good Housekeeping.

It's funny.

It's no wonder, then, that the Christie stories keep getting billed and tweaked slightly towards the romantic space when so much of these magazines page time is turned over to matters of marriage and courting and all sorts.

We've got it again.

There's this lovely blur just before a Bertram's hotel begins.

It says 3 great names.

Great is underlined.

Daphne du Maurier.

Oh, we should do a bonus episode about oh.

My goodness, yes, that's such an obvious one.

Daphne du Maurier, Mary Stuart and Agatha Christie lead the list of best selling romantic suspense writers throughout the whole world.

Now with this appearance of Agatha Christie to round out the trio, all have graced the pages of Good Housekeeping in the past year.

Here is Miss Christie's newest novel, her best and most exciting in 20 years, apparently featuring that ever delightful and winning detective, Miss Jane Marple.

And then there's a huge illustrations of key #18 and then in Times New Roman at Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie, which.

Is very similar, if not the same, but slightly more Starlight that the the 1st edition in the US used that image as well.

Oh.

Really.

I think.

It's a slightly stylised version of that, yeah, yeah, the.

Illustration over the page of the kind of Bertram's drawing room or or grand, you know, dining room area is beautiful, yeah.

It's a bit brown, but that would be accurate.

There's a lot of.

Brown.

In it, there's a splash of orange, and Miss Marple is is a splash of pink as well.

So this is the one that's actually split over 2 issues.

So the next issue's got 20 new hairdos to make you prettier than ever.

Marina Oswald, you look.

You look.

Directly.

I did.

I did You know Marina Oswald and Marie Tippett?

The forgotten widows are the Kennedy tragedy.

The Kennedys pop up a lot on these covers.

Yeah, but also the birth control method that may replace the pill.

So actually I was thinking when I was looking at the previous issue that Good Housekeeping felt very safe, a little bit old fashioned, but hey, look, they're talking about the pill on their their front cover, so all power to them.

Yeah, mind you, I mean they have had six years to get their their head around the concept of the pill since it was first introduced to a very limited number of women in certain situations at the start of the decade in 1960.

And there's another nice illustration with a quite scary Miss Marple in the background, doing more than just eavesdropping.

She's she's, she's staring daggers.

But yeah, at the at what looks like a romantic couple.

Is that supposed to be best Sedgwick?

And she's wearing slip like dress, Yeah.

Maybe.

Maybe she is.

Yeah.

So it's nice that they're giving the stories proper prominence still and and giving them the sort of Gold Star treatment, Really.

Yeah.

Again emphasising the romantic angle there though.

Yes, which is such a common thing, yeah.

Yeah, the illustration caption.

Miss Marple was worried.

No young girl with money should love a man of that sort, which I actually don't think is the message of the the novel at all.

But again, it's being it's being packaged.

It's like how journalists will read headlines of articles they've written and gone.

Well, I didn't like that.

And.

It's kind of the.

Splashy ephemera around, you know, the para text around the actual thing that appears in the in the paper or whatever it may be.

Reminds me because there's quite a lot of, especially in the earlier decades, the moving finger.

I remember there being a big thing about Wow, we could, we've got to emphasise the romantic couples.

So there's so many pictures of like budding romance, but none of Miss Marple in the.

Not that she's in it very much, but still.

Well, that's another point actually, which is that these are billed as stories of Poirot and Miss Marple and, and maybe the abridgments do overemphasise their aspects, but a common complaint of books like, well, in particular I'm thinking Cat in the Pigeons and the Clocks is the prose not actually in it much.

But again, that's the way they're being marketed to this to these magazines readers.

And then so Third Girl appears in Redbook.

3rd Girl is a Poirot novel set in swinging London about a young woman who thinks she may have committed a murder from 1966 in April 1967.

Well, she.

Published quite a few Agatha Christie's way back to it.

Released.

Yeah, I wasn't that familiar with it until I I think collection Christie did an article about them a while ago.

But why didn't they ask Evans?

I remember doing and yeah, the first book publication is actually a special red Book book of why didn't they ask Evans so, But this time it's, as you say, third girl.

Oh my God, So the top headline in this edition of Redbook is the innocent game that disrupts marriages.

Is that talking about swingers?

I don't think it is.

I I wish I had it.

I've got it at home.

We are obviously in America, so I do have this.

You mean you didn't bring as well?

Didn't bring it with me and we've only photographed a few relevant pages.

But I remember thinking it might be swinging and actually I don't think it was.

I think it was something else.

So damn nation.

Yes, yes.

Well.

I'm sorry you.

It's actually the third girl that appears in this magazine.

It is that's that's in the contents page, and indeed on the on the first page of it.

It doesn't appear to be an illustration, no no.

Redbook didn't really do illustrations very much.

They were very much about, yeah, about the text of the articles and the.

So you'd buy this for the articles you see?

That's what you do like.

Playboy.

Exactly, yes.

And then endless night.

Endless Night is a standalone psychological thriller in which young couple Michael and Ellie are menaced by unusual happenings from 1967.

Was taken up for serialisation in the Saturday Evening Post in 1968.

And that this is another split across two issues, yes.

And I mean.

It's too good to abridge too heavily I would argue.

Another publication that's had decades of association with Agatha Christie and in our swinging Christie's era, this is where our Tom Adams comes in being a little bit more surreal than you know, the because the owl what where is.

Normally he's so straightforward.

But I mean, look at the way that the he uses colours and that that hands and the people on that it's.

Very much it's very classic hymn, but it's it's different because the owl illustration will post this on our socials, but the owl illustration is almost photo realistic, whereas the hand is very, very much illustrated exactly.

And then the traveller figure is set back.

You know, it's, it's very layered as well.

And then the trees behind her and.

There's a lovely depiction of the house which I really like a few pages in all right at the beginning.

Actually in the end is my beginning.

Oh yes.

Oh, which is really nice and not 1,000,000 miles away from the version of the house we see in the the film.

Very, very true.

Just with a.

Few more curves added to the front, really.

Yeah.

Yeah, the sort of the blocky side of it that's incomplete is looks a little more like the house in that film.

Yeah, it does, yeah.

So a nice mixture of colour and black and white illustrations as well.

Yeah.

Typically gruesome images of well, I don't even quite know what that was with vegetation overtaking a dead body there.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, that's so.

That's for Part 2.

Yes.

Well, elsewhere in these issues, we've got Paul Newman about directing his first movie, and then in the the second part of it, it's Kennedy's again.

This is the thing about a funny and fascinating look into the future.

So the idea of Bobby Kennedy being sworn in as the acting president.

So Kennedy's, Kennedy's, Kennedy's, you're not escaping them in this era.

Did you do that deliberately?

No, because you know the the famous Jingle.

Oh.

Yeah, Kennedy.

Kennedy.

Kennedy.

Kennedy.

Kennedy.

Yeah, Kennedy.

For me it was 1960.

Well.

There you go, it is obviously lodged.

In your brain somewhere.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that is particularly kind of galling and and timely and strange to look at for all sorts of reasons, because this is just a few months before Robert F Kennedy was assassinated and and there was something of a target on his back because people who didn't side with the Kennedys were concerned that this could happen.

So, yeah, again, we said in our New York episode how Dorothy Alding and Agatha Christie's lives were sort of intersecting with current affairs in terms of the Kennedys.

And here it is again.

And I've said this many times, but there's a, there's a really interesting Jackie Kennedy reference in Halloween Party as well, which is the following year.

So yeah.

And then this one we spent quite some time with.

This is the periodical publication of By the Pricking of My Thumbs.

Yes.

By the Pricking of My Thumbs sees Tommy and Tuppence return to investigate a mystery at a nursing home from 1968 in.

Cosmopolitan Cosmopolitan in July 1969, with a woman in bikini on the cover, no doubt emulating Afternoon at the Seaside.

Oh, I think it's a direct reference.

It's a it's a great.

Photo, actually, because it's there's a green background and then the bikini is green, Yeah.

The mystery novel is smashing.

Agatha's new mystery novel is smashing.

I would.

Agree with that in terms of the contents of the magazine besides Agatha Christie.

We've got everything from 38 Men tell a nice girl like you what turns them on to how to have rich girl hair, what it's like to have a Latin lover before you buy a stereo.

And then, yeah, there were lots of handbrake turns here into a fiction feast.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, I've just realised that I thought it was what it's like to have a Latin lover before you buy a stereo that's.

Why?

I laugh.

Oh, pause between.

The two It's what it's like to have a Latin lover and also before you an article about buying a stereo, I thought it was like the best way to have a Latin love, the best thing to do, the best stereos for Latin lovers is to dance around.

I see now.

And now As for by the pricking of my thumbs itself, it's a very creepy and I've got to say, not terribly inviting sort of pencil drawing that that brings you into it's condensed version of, I mean.

Again, it it could be, it isn't, but it could be a Tom Adams, couldn't it?

Yeah.

Very much of that style, yes.

It's not, it's, it's not one of the better illustrations that I've seen.

I have to say what will put out on our social media anyway so you can judge for yourself and tell me if I'm wrong and.

I noted that the the abridged novel comes pretty much at the end of the magazine.

There's the Agony Aunt column, Dear Cosmopolitan, and an ad.

And then you're right at the end of the magazine.

And you said it was fairly common that they would be the combination of the magazine or sometimes they they'd have the first few pages early on and then turn to page blah, blah to finish.

Exactly.

Yeah, that's exactly what might happen.

So it really depends on the magazine and the era.

But they were obviously trying to get you to get as far into the magazine as possible to read as many adverts as possible.

Sure.

So they would split them up quite often or put the juiciest stuff at the end, having been trailed right at the beginning.

Yeah.

Adverts that included two separate tampon companies, I noted, and I thought it was interesting.

I was looking at the the politics around the Abortion Act being passed in the UK the year before by the breaking of my Thumbs was published and the various kind of politics around the culprit of this story and what motivates her.

And I think it's a much more nuanced conversation than maybe people have given it credit for in the past.

And I'm sure the research that I've done around that will be finding an outlook very soon.

But I did note that those passages where tuppence at the end, where tuppence demonstrates a real sympathy and understanding for what women go through, frankly were kept intact in this abridgement, which I wasn't.

I wouldn't have been 100% surprised if if those have been cut just around reader sensibilities given this sort of politics of some of the things they're talking about.

Like you said, very housewife photo focus, quite nuclear family, quite establishment oriented.

But yeah, in many ways that's quite a daring and radical story, so it's great to see it in a mainstream magazine.

And then our last one, because passengers to Frankfurt isn't serialised and indeed wasn't offered really.

There are a couple of rudely well, yes, that's that's another story.

He's cosmopolitan again.

1969 Halloween Party Halloween Party is a Poirot mystery novel in which a girl is drowned while apple bobbing.

From 1969.

Now I think this cover.

Again, missing missing actual Halloween because it was published in December, just like the original publication.

I think this cover, which is you've got gorgeous gold and black and fantastic styling.

I think you could put that on on the news stands and you wouldn't notice that it was from the 60s.

I think is a really timeless image.

You're looking at me like I'm crazy.

I really think that as a timeless cover.

They've tidied up their font for their masthead for Cosmopolitan, so it looks nice and clean and modern.

I think it looks great it.

Looks great.

I do think it's very of it's time though.

I mean, I think her her styling and her makeup is is not.

You wouldn't see that kind of ecstatic.

Now, I do love the glitter ball earring.

Yeah.

I was saying to James, my partner, that I, it feels to me like actually something that I might see in like 2005 or something that just when things were a bit sort of trying to be a bit collaby.

And you test daily, test daily's opening press, look for the first season.

Strict come.

Dancing.

Yeah, maybe that.

So another nice range of articles.

How to be his last wife when you're not his first.

The woman who is making Jacqueline the narcissist jealous.

So here's Jackie Kennedy.

Again and and alongside Halloween party alongside.

Halloween party homosexual man can be habit forming.

One girl's story.

We're going to go on to that in a moment because I can't skip over that.

Jobs for bored, restless young housewives.

Raquel Welch.

I'm not saying like how Welch is a pause restless housewife.

This is.

What I mean, you're not pausing sufficiently between them.

It's.

Pause a Cosmo girl, Christmas, beauty, food decorating, all to a man's taste and then finally Agatha Christie's latest thriller.

Yeah, and a full profile on Patrick Mcgoohan.

Yes.

Very 60s famous, just just off the back of The prisoner and Danger Man before that, in which he's extremely grumpy, but the interviewer is clearly in love with him anyway, so that's interesting.

And then why?

Is that because the interviewer was a moving on to the next topic?

Homosexual man Colon.

How I kicked the habit.

Oh my goodness, this is extraordinary.

So this is basically an entire article about saying don't hang around with gay men and gay men.

But also there's real caution about that.

Blatant homosexuals, it seems, are fine.

He's a he's a familiar enough commodity to any girl who's out and about, apparently.

But it's the ones who actually pass and are not as as if they're heterosexual, which this article incredibly categorises as bisexual.

And you're like, no, that's not what it means.

So they are saying that straight acting.

I'm using quotation air quotes here.

Gay men are apparently bisexual.

So it's basically saying be careful of your men because they might not be obviously homosexual.

So there's a cautionary tale for us all, Speaking of speaking.

As speaking Speaking of a tinge of homoeroticism, I can't help but think of the conversation about the aesthetics of beauty that Michael and Hercule Poirot have in the Quarry garden in Halloween Party, which is just a few pages on an Hercule Poirot mystery Halloween party.

And the illustration does depict said garden with the nymph like Miranda at the heart of it, rather than the Adonis Michael, Which is a shame really.

But.

Interrupted only by an advert for three full inches added to a bus line in only 8 weeks.

It happened to me apparently, so there you go.

Good Lord.

I've just turned the page and seen Oh, so Michael is in the illustration also painting Miranda, Yes.

And this sort of.

Mythical creatures and mate.

Is that supposed to be Poirot behind him?

Oh, I guess it is very.

He's very young.

He's very young.

He's very dapper.

I mean, you'd expect him to be dapper, I suppose, but 60s dapper?

Yeah.

Nice striped tie.

Would never imagine Poirot in a traditional no.

It's all Poirot reimagined as a young former Etonian A little bit, isn't it?

So yes, so that's it.

So those are our main magazine American publications of our swinging era.

And I just love the idea that that that somebody would be going and reading about you know what, about how to keep your man or you know what contraceptions available or the latest scandal of the Kennedys and then go straight and read 1 of Agatha Christie's stories and may be presented together.

And this idea of Agatha Christie being old fashioned again, we're talking cosmopolitan here.

She isn't seen as an old fuddy Duddy who nobody wants to think is swinging.

She.

Is absolutely standing shoulder to shoulder with these incredibly modern aesthetics and subject matters.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

I also, it struck me that it's an easy criticism to level at Christie sometimes and one that a lot of fans do things like, oh, well, that love plot is shoehorned in there.

Or oh, but you know, she always uses romance or or divorce or marriage or whatever it is as a motive.

She goes to that well, too often or things like she wrapped that up too neatly with a bow.

And I could have left with some things unanswered or even the overuse of Poira and Marple.

All of these things are things that made these stories incredibly attractive too, as you said at the beginning, the lucrative periodical market, all of these things.

And you know, this isn't, this isn't Christie resting on her laurels.

It's her being savvy about what readers want, actually.

And, and that is, you know, how she was able to be so successful and, and to write so much and publish so much.

So yeah, it helps us understand her even better, I think I.

Think so too.

So the time has come, Grey, for us to wave goodbye to our second American city of this trip.

Yes, yes.

Yeah.

So yeah, Washington, DC, thank you for having us.

Yeah, we've had a lovely, sunny few days.

We.

Have we have we've been very lucky, Yeah, just yeah.

Waiting for the train back, it's all very organised which I think we both appreciate just how yes sort.

Of yes, I like a display.

I like something to be telling me when and where I need to be.

Yeah, comfortable waiting area, designated waiting spots.

Yes.

Preserved seat Huge.

Amounts of open spaces that could quite easily accommodate lots of seating and clearly don't want it to.

But let's not delve too deeply into the politics behind that.

Do this.

Well, yes, maybe now is the moment to give a disclaimer that these episodes are in no way supposed to be seen as an endorsement of anything that's going on in America right now, but.

We've we've booked these tickets a long time we.

Did we did and planned the trip but it's also it's nice to you know everyone we've met has been absolutely lovely and it's important to remember that whatever server who thought that I was gonna dash yeah.

You do have that look about you though.

They were they We went to the same place today and they were a little unsure about this.

A different server was a little unsure about your.

Yeah.

Credentials again.

Do you want the check?

Yeah.

Do you want the check?

Do you want no, It was emphasis on one.

Yeah.

Do you want the check or are you planning on running?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So I had to get security, yeah.

We spent our last morning in DC at the National African.

American Museum, History Museum.

Yeah.

Which last time I was here was still being constructed.

The building was here, but it wasn't open yet, Right.

And I was like, wow, what an amazing builder.

It's beautiful and it is still beautiful and so good inside.

Yeah, really.

Really like that.

It was really.

Plus it didn't.

Pull its punches.

No, actually just about everybody was complicit in this.

Yeah, it was a proper, proper holistic approach at all of the history across.

Yeah, across different, yeah, different areas and, and various different exhibitions as well.

One one thing in particular I noticed and it's a nice reminder from our perspective, there was a there was a particular section on 1960s and it's good for us to remember, of course, that this is all going on along the side Christie writing.

And I also noticed that the first meeting there was a exhibit that made the point that before this period, museums, particularly in America, were very much from the white perspective and any kind of black artefacts were very much privately held.

Yeah.

Or lost, you know, because the priority was in there.

And do you know what year the first, the first meeting where they sort of said like, no, actually we need to start acknowledging African American history.

And well, it was 1969, so it's.

In the period we're talking about, so which is?

Another reminder.

I mean, obviously fairly recent comparatively, but it is another reminder that you know, when we talk, we we talk all the time about the 60s and it really was an important decade and it really did lay the foundation for us today being in and African American museum.

I mean that that the ball started rolling in 1969.

It was really well constructed.

Highly recommended.

I think that the the one that we've enjoyed the most or the most interesting I've enjoyed because, you know, there's, there's real levels to it, yeah, where you can enjoy learning about things but still have a real personal impact like.

The music exhibition, which neglected to include Diana Ross.

We both came out because we sort of wandered around it separately, and when we met up at the end, I said, Did I miss Diana Ross?

He said I was gonna ask you that.

So yes.

And.

Next episode, the American theme continues, although in a slightly different way because it's our Shirley Jackson special dropping in about a months time.

So to stay tuned and keep subscribed, yes.

And keep swinging.

Indeed, got lots of.

Plans Lots more goodies on the.

Way very exciting things already recorded and ready to go dude.

So obviously you can get in touch with us, you can follow us in all sorts of different ways, maybe not in person, but online.

There's lots of ways to follow us in various legal.

Ways in very.

Legal and yes, yes, required ways requested ways.

You can find us on Instagram at Christy Underscore time.

Our blue sky is Christy time dot beast, sky dot social.

You can e-mail us at christytimeprod@gmail.com.

That's prod for productions.

A website ischristytime.com.

You can find greyswebsite@greyrobertbrown.wicksite.com/grey Robert Brown.

Find me at Instagram at Doctor Mark Aldridge and on Blue Sky markaldridge.info, which is also my website URL.

And of course, my books about Agatha Christie are available now.

So if you haven't picked it up by now, I think it's a lost cause if you haven't been up by now, actually.

But but still, maybe, maybe treat yourself.

You get a book voucher from your gramme, Yeah.

But this is also maybe a lost cause because I said that I'm putting the Facebook.

Please, if you haven't already, do consider rating and reviewing us wherever you get your podcast because it makes such a difference.

Gaming algorithms and spreading the word.

And we really do appreciate it.

We read every comment and reply to everything.

We read every e-mail.

So yeah, do do get in touch and keep swinging.

Keep swinging, Thanks for listening my little stars and stripes.

The Swinging Christies is a Christie time project by Doctor Mark Aldridge and Grey Robert Brown.

This episode was recorded between the 24th and 26th of May 2025.

Our artwork was designed by Bartlett Studio and our music is by DAR Golem.

Perfect, perfect levels there, Graham.

Maximum yawn.

Please.

Can you work one out?

Work one out work.

One out, another big yawn.

I'm not sure if we have a code of this episode.

You'll find one.