6 h. ago BBC harnesses AI to create writing classes given by Agatha Christie

Videos will share the author’s tips on everything from story structure and plot twists to the art of suspenseAspiring crime writers now have the chance to be taught by “Agatha Christie”, thanks to a course of online video lessons by BBC Maestro. The videos “starring” the author, who died in 1976, have been made using AI-enhanced technology, licensed images and carefully restored audio recordings.Videos made using a reconstruction of Christie’s voice will share tips on everything from story structure and plot twists to the art of suspense. The writing advice has been drawn directly from her writings and archival interviews and curated by the leading Christie scholars Dr Mark Aldridge, Michelle Kazmer, Gray Robert Brown and Jamie Bernthal-Hooker. Continue reading...

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8 h. ago Agatha Christie brought 'back from the dead' in astonishing new BBC venture

The venture to create a virtual version of the world’s best-selling author is part of a 'first of its kind' deal struck between the Agatha Christie Estate and BBC Maestro

Events

43 h. ago ‘You have to be taken inside Poirot’s brain’: Ken Ludwig on the secret to adapting Agatha Christie

The US playwright and anglophile behind much-revived comedies has a flair for crime and is following a crowd-pleasing Murder on the Orient Express with Death on the NileIf you ever face a quiz question about the most performed theatre writers in the world, likely to have a play on somewhere every day, William Shakespeare, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Agatha Christie are all reliable answers but a fourth may surprise you: Ken Ludwig. He also has intriguing connections with the other three.The popularity that made the American wealthy enough to have donated £1m to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is partly due – apart from his own much-revived comedies, Lend Me a Tenor (1986) and Moon Over Buffalo (1995) – to Christie. Ludwig’s 2017 adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express has had hundreds of productions and is currently touring the UK. We meet when he is in London for a workshop on a second Hercule Poirot adaptation, Death on the Nile, which premieres in September. Continue reading...

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4 d. ago Bonkers Larne vs Glentoran rammy live on the BBC sparks astonishment as violence sees 'hefty bans incoming'

Flare-ups across the pitch sparked mayhem and a major investigation from the Irish Football Association is poised to follow.

Events

2 w. ago Two Scots reunited 60 years after one brought other back from the dead at Govan Baths

Neil McPhee was just 14 when he suffered an injury and drowned at Glasgow’s Govan Baths on September 1, 1965.

Events

3 w. ago The Bondsman review – the scariest thing about Kevin Bacon’s demonic thriller? His singing

This bizarre drama stars the Hollywood actor as a dead bounty hunter brought back to life by the devil to do his bidding. Sadly, it also includes horrifying country musicThere is nothing very new to see in The Bondsman. How much you enjoy it will depend on how much you enjoy Kevin Bacon (laconic, hard-bitten Kevin Bacon, not Tremors Kevin Bacon and not Footloose Kevin Bacon), how much you enjoy tales of demonic possession in a small town in southern America and how much you enjoy the sound of partly severed heads, blown-out tracheas and bloodied fingers. I am seven degrees of separation from liking this last aspect.But Bacon is Bacon, and if he is slightly sleepwalking through his role here as Hub Halloran, tracker of ne’er-do-wells with warrants against their names, well, it is hardly inappropriate given that, for most of the eight episodes, Hub is dead. He is killed by local heavies hired by Lucky Callahan (Damon Herriman – you’ll know him when you see him), the new boyfriend of H...

Politics

last month Gatsby by Jane Crowther; The Gatsby Gambit by Claire Anderson

Two enjoyable debut novels put fresh meat on Fitzgerald’s deathless classic – one a modern-day retelling in which Gatsby becomes a female influencer, another a pacy murder mystery in the vein of Agatha ChristieIt might seem unfathomable to us now, but F Scott Fitzgerald’s third novel was something of a let-down when it was published 100 years ago; his previous books, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned – there had also been a novella, The Diamond As Big As the Ritz, and short stories including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – had been more commercially successful and found greater favour with critics. Fitzgerald’s tale of obscure origins, extreme wealth and obsessional romantic desire appeared too unlikely, too contrived and, perhaps, too uncomfortable a reminder of class and financial inequality and its consequent social schisms to be recognised for what it was: a masterly exploration of delusion, self-delusion, myth-making and complicity.Fitzgerald himself died...

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