Big news or what? I mean the news that Hercule Poirot is due for a revival in a new novel to be written by Sophie Hannah. You can read about this in Italian and Spanish; in French and German and Polish. I even saw the item reported in a newspaper in New Zealand but for which I neglected to save the link and can no longer find it. Here, though, in today’s Times (£), is the report that I like best, because it includes the following historical detail:
She [Sophie Hannah] became obsessed with Christie at 13, she said. “My dad bought me a copy of The Body in the Library from a second-hand book fair. I loved it, so I said, in that imperious way that only teenagers can: ‘Get me all the others.’ In the next year or year and a half I didn’t read anything else.”
Not that I’m trying to take the credit. Who knows what the effects of one’s minor actions are going to be? – and the credit is all Soph’s own. It’s just an illustration of the very common phenomenon of unforeseen consequences.
(Update: New Zealand. Thanks: PB.)