Agatha Christie and the Knox Commandments

In March I had an email from a lady in Australia who I have been corresponding with over the past year or so. I suppose she is what I would describe as an e-friend but I feel that makes her sound unreal, which she most definitely is not. Whatever the description of our relationship, I have discovered that she has excellent taste in reading. She told me recently that she has been reading my books interspersed with detective stories by none other than Agatha Christie. Wow. To be selected to feature on a bookshelf or bedside table next to the greatest writer of detective fiction of all time is quite an honour.

As it happens I have been a huge fan of Agatha Christie for the past thirty-five or more years. After my university final exams, for which I had worked harder than for any other set of exams in my life, I went into a period of shut-down. I hid away in my parents’ farmhouse and read first the entire works of Dostoyevsky, which was perhaps not the wisest of moves, and then the entire works of Agatha Christie, which was a much better decision. I found such pleasure in inhabiting her various worlds and learning to appreciate her brilliant construction, feinting and plot-twisting. What I did not know then but I do know now is that she was a founder member of the Detection Club, formed in 1930, during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, an era when classic murder mystery novels were overwhelmingly popular.

Monsignor Ronald Knox © Lafayette, NPG London

The club included among its members the writers Dorothy L. Sayers, Hugh Walpole, G.K. Chesterton (its first president) and Monsignor Ronald Knox. This last man is the link in the chain to my most recent book but I will come to that in a while. The club’s oath is glorious: ‘Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act of God?’

Members had a set of guidelines which were drawn up by Knox and were known as the Knox Commandments. It might seem rather odd that a man of faith, a man described by some as the greatest Roman Catholic scholar of the twentieth century, should be a member of a detective writing club but that is the delight of this great polymath. He wrote detective stories in the same way he might have set a crossword puzzle. He was not interested in the emotional motives of his perpetrators but in the solving of a crime that could keep the reader guessing right to the end of the book. And he wrote the books – ten in all – to supplement his modest stipend.

His Commandments number ten, of course, and were adhered to by the members. They forbid the murder being committed by the detective. A Watson-type side-kick has to reveal all thoughts that pass through his mind; the detective cannot conceal any clues he finds, and twin brothers and doubles ‘generally must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them’. Most of the rules stand the test of time, such as no supernatural or preternatural agencies being permitted or no hitherto undiscovered poisons, but others strike one as anomalous today such as ‘no Chinaman must figure in the story’. He also suggests that no more than one secret room or passage should be allowed. Unless today’s detective stories are set in old houses I feel the secret passage is rather outdated. Having said that, Knox spent the Second World War in a haunted house in Shropshire, so I suspect that secret passages were not far from reality at Aldenham Park.

Ronald Knox gave up writing detective stories in 1937 at the request of Lady Daphne Acton (although he did publish one last story in 1947). He had taken her on as a pupil as she wished to convert to Catholicism as he had done twenty years earlier. She was twenty-five, beautiful and highly intelligent. Before they first met he had been alarmed at the prospect of instructing a young woman – his own experience having been at Oxford and then at Bury St Edmunds where he came across few women in the course of his ministry. But he need not have worried. She put him immediately at his ease and he was soon captivated by her. Her brother-in-law invited him to accompany them on a cruise to the Adriatic and it was there that the two of them made a pact: Ronald would give up writing detective fiction (Lady Acton threw a copy of Double Cross Purposes overboard) and she would stop wearing the colour of lipstick he disliked. That went into the blue waters as well. She would offer him peace and a place to work, which he yearned, and he in turn would continue to instruct her.

In June 1939 Knox moved books, curtains, furniture and a lifetime of memories from Rose Place in Oxford to the Acton’s family home, Aldenham Park in Shropshire. His plan was to fulfil his life’s ambition which was to translate both books of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English. It was a task American scholars had estimated would take a decade using ten translators. Knox completed it in less than five years and in considerably less peace and quiet than he and Daphne Acton had anticipated. A day before Chamberlain announced that the country was at war with Germany, nine nuns and five lay sisters from the Convent of the Assumption in Kensington arrived at Aldenham at the invitation of Lord Acton.

Sisters from The Assumption, Kensington Square, London photographed at Aldenham Park in c. 1941. Their habits were purple and designed by House Worth © The Assumption Archive

Three weeks later fifty-five girls between the ages of eleven and seventeen arrived to be taught by the nuns. Lord Acton had been approached by the Reverend Mother and thought it more satisfactory to have a girls’ school at his country house than the army. It turns out he was right. To have the army take over was the worst possible outcome for home owners as their needs were opposed in almost every way to those of the previous incumbents. Large country houses had been looked after by armies of servants for a small number of spoilt inhabitants. When the tables were turned and armies of officers and soldiers were looked after by a small number of men from the catering corps, the houses were found to be completely inadequate: no central heating and few bathrooms were just some of the problems that confronted the new occupants.

Knox moved into the gardener’s cottage and worked in the corner of Lady Acton’s sitting room. It was in this small space that the Knox Bible was translated in an atmosphere of girls, ghosts and godliness. It was surely one of the strangest juxtapositions of the Second World War. Ronald Knox continued to correspond with members from the Detection Club and remained close personal friends with Agatha Christie, whose house Greenway in Devon was requisitioned by the US Coast Guard.
Lives entwined, experiences shared and all mixed up on a bookshelf in Australia. Thank you, Ellen Hall, for reminding me how much I love historical coincidences.

Girls, Ghosts and Godliness appears in Our Uninvited Guests 

A World in Your Ear

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When I started researching and writing Jambusters seven years ago I had no idea that it would lead me on such an exciting adventure which culminated in ITV’s drama series Home Fires. None at all. However, what I knew from fairly early on was that there would be an audio CD.

In 2014, Catriona Oliphant of award-winning ChromeAudio had asked me about recording an abridged version of Jambusters with excerpts from Ralph Vaughan Williams’ arrangement of Folk Songs of the Four Seasons, commissioned by the WI in 1949. I had worked with her twice in the past with great pleasure on Stranger in the House and The Colonel of Tamarkan, runner-up in Best Audiobook of the Year 2010.  Sadly Catriona developed breast cancer and the project was put on hold.

Meanwhile, many of us (6.2 million every week) watched with great pleasure the goings on in Great Paxford during the first year of the war over twelve episodes of Simon Block’s exceptionally well written drama. As you who follow the story will know, the drama is inspired by Jambusters but not based on the people I wrote about, such as Lady Denman, Edith Jones or Ruth Toosey. We see hints of the real-life, non-fictional characters in Frances Barden, Joyce Cameron, Alison Scotlock and Steph Farrow and the history, as I have said many times, is solid and accurate, both of the WI and the war itself. That was my role in advising on the scripts.

Home Fires

Despite a petition signed by over 30,000 people and endless letters and pots of jam sent to ITV they have resolutely refused to change their mind. The cast and crew were stood down in June and the costumes released to Angels. If there is a future for Home Fires it will be with another broadcaster at an unspecified time in years to come. For now Great Paxford is closed for business.

Fortunately there is a happy ending to the audio CD story. Catriona recovered from surgery and treatment and is now back at work – recently she has been working with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on podcasts for the Somme Vigil in Westminster Abbey marking the centenary of the Battle of the Somme.  The audio abridgement of Jambusters is in its final edit and will be released in September.  The readers are the wonderful Samantha Bond and Fenella Woolgar. For those of you who know Home Fires, Samantha Bond played the fiercely proud, crack-shot WI president, Frances Barden. Fenella Woolgar, as Alison Scotlock, was the book-keeper wrong-footed by a businessman who took advantage of her brilliant brain and vulnerability over a huge vet’s fee to cook his books. Both actors commented during the filming of Home Fires that they had been moved by the incredible sense of community inspired by the WI in the war years. They also both told me that it had been one of the happiest productions they had ever worked on, not least because of the strong female-led cast. ‘We were ridiculously happy.’ Samantha said.

The recording of the audio was an equally happy process. Catriona (executive producer) and Alexa Moore (producer) loved the women in Jambusters and were delighted by the way they came alive when voiced by Samantha and Fenella – who will also help keep the spirit of Home Fires burning for those of us devastated by ITV’s decision not to continue with the drama.

cropped-Jambusters-HB-1.jpg

For me, the audio CD is a wonderful celebration of the WI and, in particular, the important part played by its members in keeping the country going during the Second World War.  The CD is also a very practical way of celebrating the WI.  The WI has charitable status as an educational organisation, but the future of its educational headquarters, Denman College, is in jeopardy because of worries over the cost of maintaining the Grade II listed building. When Catriona heard about the appeal within the WI to raise money for Denman, she immediately proposed donating £1 for every CD sold to the appeal.

Denman
Denman College, the home of the WI’s education programme aimed at empowering and inspiring women

Catriona hopes to raise £10,000 for Denman College.  I am a great fan of Denman and will be spreading the word to help her reach her target.  I very much hope you will too. If each WI group were to buy a copy of the audio CD for its archive that would itself raise nearly £7,000 for Denman, before taking into account sales to family and friends.

If you are interested in purchasing a CD you can find more information here AudioCD. If you would like to get your name or that of a WI printed in the Jambusters CD booklet, please subscribe before 22 July 2016. The CD will be launched at an event at Denman College on 19 August and will be on general release from September.

 

 

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