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THIS EVENT IS PART OF THE AGATHA CHRISTIE FESTIVAL

Our Roger Ackroyd celebration continues with a fascinating talk by the ever-popular Gray Robert Brown, one half of the hit podcast, The Swinging Christies.

WHO IS ROGER STYLES? The most notorious spy of the twentieth century is on the run. He has dwindling allies, amassing enemies, and minimal hope of escape. Where does he turn? Where else - but to the pages of an Agatha Christie.

Did you know that Guy Burgess, one of the Cambridge Five, chose a secret alias directly from the words of Agatha Christie? What else might we understand about Burgess's dramatic life story by using the lens of not one but two of Christie's best novels, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) and The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)?

And this relationship becomes reciprocal - because after the Burgess story breaks, Christie makes several allusions to these spies in her stories, in books such as The Clocks (1963) and Passenger to Frankfurt (1970)...

We know Christie wrote thrillers aplenty - but is it possible that she was more directly immersed in the spy world than some people think...?

Trust no-one, question everything, laugh at his jokes. An original talk by Gray Robert Brown.

Gray Robert Brown is a writer, podcaster and speaker. As a playwright, he has appeared on long- and shortlists for the Old Vic New Voices 12, the Papatango Prize, the Theatre 503 International Playwriting Prize, BOLD Playwrights, the Oxford Playhouse Playmaker, and the Traverse Theatre Breakthrough scheme. His plays have received rehearsed readings at the Southwark Playhouse, the Old Red Lion and The Place, Bedford. Along with 'Agathologist' Dr Mark Aldridge, as "Christie Time", Gray co-created the podcast The Swinging Christies in 2024; Westmapod followed in 2026. Gray has been fascinated by Agatha Christie since childhood and grew up a mere eight miles from her former home in Wallingford.