Re-Writing the Past, Autobiography and Celebrity in Agatha (1979): ‘An Imaginary Solution to an Authentic Mystery’

Abstract

When crime writer Agatha Christie went missing inexplicably in December 1926, a national scandal erupted as detectives and the public searched for the author. After eleven days she turned up in a hotel in Harrogate where she had registered under a false name. While speculation ensued that she had been suffering from memory loss, or mental instability after learning that her husband wanted to leave her for another woman, the full story behind the episode was never revealed. Kathleen Tynan published a novel in 1978 speculating what might have happened, and this was adapted for the screen as Agatha (Michael Apted, 1979), starring Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffmann. Drawing on papers in the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, Exeter, and in the Film Finances archives, London, this article discusses the film’s tortuous journey from script to release, causing controversy for reasons that exceeded the contested nature of its subject matter. Through the twists and turns of a fascinating case study of Anglo-American co-production and conflict, the article explores how a particularly intriguing set of circumstances connected the film to broader questions of celebrity, authenticity, memory and fiction that resonated in subsequent years as television and filmmakers continued to speculate about the eleven ‘lost’ days in Agatha Christie’s life.