Book # 3 of self’s 2023 Reading Year is a new biography of Agatha Christie: Agatha Christie, An Elusive Woman.
Whatever is old is new again.
Self found the movie adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile extremely entertaining.
Chapter 10, Love and Death, is about Christie’s first marriage, to a dashing member of the Royal Flying Corps named Archie Christie. Alas, the pilots (including Archie) were ill-prepared for WWI.
The British had inferior machines and training, and were losing four times as many planes as the Germans. Pilots arrived in France with fewer and fewer hours of experience. One newcomer to Archie’s base was asked how much time he’d logged.
“Fourteen hours. Fourteen hours! It’s absolutely disgraceful to send pilots overseas with so little flying. You don’t stand a chance . . . Another fifty hours and you might be quite decent; but fourteen! My God, it’s murder!”
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Kanlaon 