Agatha and Me: Inside A Life of Crime

Val McDermid, Steph McGovern and Ruth Ware with Stuart Maconie.

What does Agatha Christie mean to the writers – and the readers – who have followed in her footsteps?

This criminally gifted panel of writers undertakes a forensic examination of Agatha Christie as a pioneer and cultural icon, and also as a woman, making her way in the writing world.

Val McDermid, Ruth Ware and Steph McGovern celebrate Christie’s enduring influence, from ingenious plots and unforgettable characters to her global status today. In conversation with Stuart Maconie, they explore their personal connections to the royal highness of crime, and ask why, more than a century after her first novel, we still can’t get enough of Agatha.

Supported by Great Western Railway.

Our exhibition, Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery, is in collaboration with Agatha Christie Limited and The Christie Archive Trust.

She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year, the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger, the Grand Prix des Romans D’Aventure, the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award, the Stonewall Writer of the Year and the LA Times Book of the Year Award. Val has served as a judge for both the Man Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction, was the Chair of the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017, and co-founded the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate in 2003.

She co-hosts the The Rest Is Money podcast with Robert Peston, and is a regular face on the BBC, fronting shows such as Have I Got News for You, and Crimewatch. She is an avid crime reader and has interviewed countless authors including Val McDermid, Harlan Coben, Ann Cleeves, Hilary Clinton, Lee Child and Don Winslow, as well as judging the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award at the Harrogate Crime Festival since 2019. Deadline (Pan Macmillan 2025) is her first novel.

Her thrillers In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, The Lying Game, The Death of Mrs Westaway, The Turn of the Key, One by One, The It Girl, Zero Days, One Perfect Couple and The Woman in Suite 11 have appeared on bestseller lists around the world, including the Sunday Times and New York Times, and have sold more than ten million copies. Her books have been optioned for both film and TV, and she is published in more than 40 languages. Ruth lives near Brighton with her family.

His books include Cider with Roadies, Pies and Prejudice, Adventures on the High Teas, With A Little Help From Their Friends and The Full English. He hosts a show for BBC Radio 6 Music (with Mark Radcliffe) every weekend morning between 8 and 11am. Based in Birmingham and Manchester, he can also often be spotted on top of a mountain in the Lake District with a Thermos flask and individual pork pie. He is a champion ice skater and once shared a van with Napalm Death.