TOADS Theatre Company presents Agatha Christie’s ‘And Then There Were None’, directed by Alec Stokes at The Little Theatre, Torquay.

Senior Lecturer in biblical studies at the University of Chichester, Hannah explores the references and allusions to faith in Christie’s Poirot mysteries and reflects on the author’s stance on morality and ethics in a secular age.

To mark the centenary of Agatha Christie’s Grand Tour, Black Tomato has been appointed by the Christie Estate as the official travel partner to bring the monumental trip to life. Here Tom Marchant gives us a taster of a trip of a lifetime, seeing the world though Agatha’s eyes and footsteps.

Dr Charlotte Beyer is Senior Lecturer in English Studies at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. She is the author of two single-author scholarly monographs to date, Murder in a Few Words: Gender, Genre and Location in the Crime Short Story (McFarland, 2020), and Contemporary Children's and Young Adult Literature: Writing Back to History and Oppression (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021). She has published six edited books, including Teaching Crime Fiction (Palgrave 2018). Charlotte has published widely on crime fiction and contemporary literature and is currently writing a book on Agatha Christie.

Best-selling authors Vaseem Khan and the Festival’s International Writer-in-Residence, Dr Ruby Gupta, examine the spectacular rise of crime fiction set in, and about, India.

Join us for a boat trip around the Bay, passing beaches loved by Agatha or featured in her works. Local author Matt Newbury will be providing a commentary, while there will be period music and a full bar on board.

Extra date added on Tuesday 13th September​​​

Mark Aldridge is Associate Professor of Screen Histories at Solent University.  His publications include the books Agatha Christie’s Poirot: the Greatest Detective in the World (2020), Agatha Christie on Screen (2016) and The Birth of British Television (2011).

SOLD OUT An opportunity to view primary sources from the University of Exeter's Special Collections' archive of correspondence and papers from the office of Agatha Christie's literary agent, Hughes Massie & Co Ltd. and hear internationally recognised expert on Christie's work, Dr John Curran, speak about how Agatha Christie came to write her very first crime novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles and how it influenced her writing career.

Carla Valentine is a qualified mortician, curator of Barts Pathology Museum and author of Past Mortems and Murder Isn’t Easy.

Dan Clanton is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Doane University, Nebraska, USA.

Kathryn is a chemist and author. She completed a doctorate on her favourite chemicals, phosphines. Her first book was the international best-seller A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie which was shortlisted for a Mystery Readers International Macavity Award and a BMA Book Award. Join her for fascinating insights into Christie’s ‘weapon of choice’ through a chemist’s eyeview.

David has studied the ghost stories of Torbay for nearly 30 years now and is certain that Agatha Christie would have been aware of most of them during her lifetime.

A unique opportunity to hear from four Christie experts whose combined knowledge of the Christie oeuvre is unparalleled. In this panel debate they will challenge each other with their own pitches for Agatha’s greatest novel.

Jeremy Musson is an architectural historian, author and journalist. His books include How to Read a Country House and English Country House Interiors. Here he casts an architectural historian’s eye on the Country House as it features in so many of Christie’s novels and shares new insights into her work.

Michael Stanley is the writing team of South Africans Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip. Their new novel A Deadly Covenant is available in North America and will be published in the UK by Orenda Books in December. In this entertaining broadcast they focus on Agatha Christie's less well-known knowledge of Sub-Saharan Africa. They will be joined by author Bryony Rheam who won the 'Write Your Own Christie' competition in 2014. She lives in Zimbabwe and has made a study of Agatha Christie's visit to Rhodesia. Her latest mystery novel is titled All Come to Dust.

Historian Professor Jeremy Black explains how Agatha Christie’s detective character Hercule Poirot is inseparable from the turbulent age in which the author lived. Black finds significant social commentary in Christie’s novels.

Christie expert Jamie Bernthal-Hooker’s talk takes places inside the atmospheric prehistoric caves that form Kents Cavern in Torquay. Partly inspired by her Grand Tour, The Man in the Brown Suit was written in Agatha Christie’s flat in London in 1924 with Agatha Christie evoking exotic African landscapes from memory. Kents Cavern plays a role in the novel as Hampsley Cavern.

This year we are hosting our literary take on a bar crawl, visiting some quirky and unusual venues around Paignton Harbour, with readings, poetry, music and unexpected happenings along the way.

All aboard for a murderous musical mystery tour as the ‘Masters of Gilbert & Sullivan in small spaces’, the Charles Court Opera company. present Express G&S, a new spoof of the classic railway mystery.

SOLD OUT We’re delighted to team up with the National Trust at Agatha Christie’s former holiday home at Greenway House to host an exclusive and intimate dinner for just 20 guests.