The 8.55 to Baghdad
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In the late 1920s, having packed her daughter off to boarding school, the divorced crime novelist Agatha Christie took a train from London to Baghdad. Iraq wasn’t in such a mess back then as it is right now, so perhaps the journey was not so unlikely back then, but still it was a major undertaking for a single mother approaching 40.
It was to be the start of a life-long love affair with the Middle East, though, which saw her spent a large part of every following year in the sands of the desert, mucking in with her second husband’s archaeological digs.
Andrew Eames stumbled across the story of her journeying almost by accident on a trip to Syria, and returned several years later to follow her route right into the heart of Baghdad on the eve of the US/British invasion.
It’s little surprise that this book has won awards. The style is flowing and natural, and the prose peppered with unusual but highly appropriate similies that give the book an extraordinary sense of life. Incidental facts around which other authors may have built long tracks demonstrate the depth of his research, and the whole thing carries you along at such a pace that you have to keep reminding yourself how long he must have been away from home doing his research: this is no small undertaking.
It is obvious that Eames has great affection for Christie’s work, and indeed he even slips into her style of snipy reportage in the closing chapters, once his journey takes him across the Iraqi border and his solo travelling is curtailed, and he finds himself a member of a larger coach-based group of intrepid explorers from the west.
Chris of the Phin was less enamoured with the ending, but for me that was the highlight - certainly once he’d got beyond the parts of Europe I’d already visited myself. The fact it took just a week and a day to read, should also say something about its style and the demands it makes on your attention.
On a related point, an audiobook version of Christie’s book The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which introduces Hercule Poirot for the first time, can be downloaded from Librivox.
If you liked that post, then try these...
Impartiality on April 25th, 2003
Oh, Joe on January 31st, 2007
Russian Roulette on October 7th, 2003
Tired of the royals on November 11th, 2003
War of the Worlds on July 14th, 2005
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February 28th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
I recommend Christie’s autography, if you like her work. I picked it up for 30p at a jumble sale ten years ago, and it’s the best book purchase I have ever done. Superbly written throughout.