Miss Marple – 10 Secrets Even Agatha Christie Never Revealed!

Agatha Christie's Greenway A Home In Devon. VIDEO below

Greenway, also known as Greenway House, is an estate on the River Dart near Galmpton in Devon, England. Once the home of famed mystery author Agatha Christie, it is now owned by the National Trust.

t was first mentioned in 1493 as "Greynway", the crossing point of the Dart to Dittisham. In the late 16th century a Tudor mansion called Greenway Court was built by the Gilbert family. Greenway was the birthplace of Humphrey Gilbert. The present Georgian house was probably built in the late 18th century by Roope Harris Roope and extended by subsequent owners. The gardens may have been remodelled by landscape gardener Humphry Repton.

Greenway was bought by Agatha Christie and her husband Max Mallowan in 1938. The house was occupied by Christie and Mallowan until their deaths in 1976 and 1978 respectively, and featured, under various guises, in several of Christie's novels. Christie's daughter Rosalind Hicks and her husband Anthony lived in the house from 1968, until Rosalind's death in 2004.

The Greenway Estate was acquired by the National Trust in 2000. Greenway House is a Grade II* listed building. The gardens and parkland are Grade II listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. The house and gardens are open to the public, as is the Barn Gallery. The large riverside gardens contain plants from the southern hemisphere, whilst the Barn Gallery shows work by contemporary local artists.

Agatha Christie frequently used places familiar to her as settings for her plots. Greenway Estate and its surroundings in their entirety or in parts are described in the following novels:

Five Little Pigs (1942)

The main house, the foot path leading from the main house to the battery overlooking the river Dart and the battery itself (where the murder occurs) are described in detail since the movements of the novel's protagonist at these locations are integral to the plot and the denouement of the murderer.

Towards Zero (1944)

The location of the estate opposite the village of Dittisham, divided from each other by the river Dart, plays an important part for the alibi and a nightly swim of one of the suspects.

Dead Man's Folly (1956)

The boat house of Greenway Estate is described as the spot where the first victim is discovered, and the nearby ferry landing serves as the place where the second real murder victim is dragged into the water for death by drowning. Other places described are the greenhouse and the tennis court, where Mrs. Oliver placed real clues and red herrings for the "murder hunt". The lodge of Greenway Estate serves as the home of Amy Folliat, the former owner of Nasse House.

ITV's Agatha Christie's Poirot episode "Dead Man's Folly" was filmed there.

Agatha Christie's home Greenway opens to the Devon public

Sophie Campbell gets a first peek at Agatha Christie’s holiday home, Greenway, which is now open to the public .

By Sophie Campbell11:14AM GMT 24 Feb 2009

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/artsandculture/4797440/Agatha-Christies-home-Greenway-opens-to-the-Devon-public.html

Set into one side of the front portico at Greenway, Agatha Christie's former holiday home in South Devon, is an unobtrusive sandstone plaque. It is incised with arcane characters, like little rows of camping stools, and it was brought back from Iraq by her archaeologist husband, Sir Max Mallowan.

"Cuneiform script, from Nineveh," says Robyn Brown automatically, eyes busy elsewhere. "It should probably be in the British Museum." Brown is the National Trust's property manager at Greenway and has been overseeing the complex, labour-intensive two-year project to open the house and gardens to the public. We re-examine the golden slab for a second. "He wrote two books on Nineveh here at the house," she adds. "She never wrote here at all."

And there you have it, the key to Greenway, which opens to the public for the first time today. You won't see a writing desk, or a study used by the great crime writer when completing one of her 79 mysteries, although she came here every summer from 1938 until her death in 1976. There is no physic garden stocked with deadly nightshade or spotted hemlock. And while three novels and a couple of murders are recognisably set here (the artist Amyas Crale dies in the garden after drinking hemlock-laced beer, and the girl guide Marlene Tucker is found strangled in the boathouse), none were written in the house. Christie saw Greenway as a place of relaxation, not of work, as a chance to enjoy family, friends and the benevolent surroundings of the River Dart. It was also somewhere to indulge the family passion – or obsession – for collecting.

Greenway is a very Devonian house. It is no-fuss Georgian, the colour of clotted cream, beautifully sited on land swooping down to the river, and on sunny days – this is, after all, the English Riviera – it soaks up the rays until dusk. It occupies its own promontory on a bit of the river that bulges like a newly fed python, surrounded on three sides by water and backed by woods of ash, beech, Monterey pine and vast swathes of camellia and rhododendron.

It must have been an utterly private retreat, used first by the Mallowans, then by Christie's daughter Rosalind Hicks and her second husband Anthony – a talented gardener – who gifted it to the National Trust in 2000. After their deaths Christie's grandson, Mathew Prichard, donated all the contents as well, making Greenway a unique treasure. It is also a logistical nightmare; parking is desperately limited, access roads are narrow and they expect more than 600 visitors a day during the peak summer season. Frantic signals are going out to persuade people to come by boat (starting from Dartmouth and Dittisham this weekend), bus, bike, foot – anything but by car. What they are going to do with people like me, who decide to visit on a whim and just turn up, I hate to think.

The family would have entered the house through the portico facing the river, stepping into a simple three-storey façade, which had side extensions added in the early 19th century. We have to enter through a side route, but the interior has been planned to feel much as though the Hicks family is still in residence. The hall has a studded leather Baghdad chest, another Mallowan find, in which a body was discovered in one of his wife's novels. It also still has the dinner gong – which was beaten each evening, apparently, by the young Mathew to summon the adults to dine. In the inner hall, old gardening hats and a scarf lie on the table beside a white leather lifebelt with "Greenway House" painted on it.

It's in the library, though, that you first begin to realise that this was no ordinary family. The room looks straight out over the glorious river view, so its shades are pulled down to block the light, but even the dimness can't hide the shelves protected with neatly folded white tissue paper, furniture under creamy dust sheets and dozens of objects, each with its own ghostly nimbus of plastic (some of these coverings will remain until the formal opening, in June, as building work continues). Beneath the covers I can see tantalising details: the shiny yellow beaks and feet of a pair of Meissen eagles; part of the Hicks' ceramics collection, which also includes superb pieces by potters such as the Leaches and others. There is the bargeware – populist pottery, often with an inscription stamped on it – collected by Mallowan, the Hicks' studio glass and Rosalind Hicks' collection of books, including a complete set of Christie novels.

Around the walls is a blue-and-white mural painted by an American officer during the Second World War. The house was requisitioned and when the soldiers left, Christie kept the mural – which she considered a war memorial – but not the 14 latrines that they had built in the house. It was said that the dozens of magnolias in the garden – another collecting tic, which included a sumptuous creamy pink magnolia grandiflora planted by Mallowan, still erupting behind the Trust shop – reminded the officers of the scented blooms of steamy Louisiana.

The Morning Room is hung with Christie's collection of shell paintings, made by sailors for their sweethearts using shells painstakingly collected on their voyages. The Drawing Room holds the shelves of highly sentimental pottery belonging to her parents and grandmother. Elsewhere there are tapestries collected by Mathew Prichard's godparents, wooden Mauchline ware souvenirs collected by Anthony Hicks and Christie, and a cabinet of Verge watches belonging to Rosalind Hicks. There are papier maché objects inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and a charming collection of Stevengraphs – little silk bookmarks or pictures made by Thomas Stevens, a Coventry silk ribbon manufacturer – featuring early fire engines, English sports and mail coaches.

There is something delightful about it all. Not necessarily aesthetically (I still shudder at the thought of one piece of china, probably worth a fortune, featuring a parakeet screeching across the summit of what looks like a mountain of blue and white marshmallows), but because of its unpretentiousness and its ardour. You can almost feel the quiet, happy hours spent researching, hunting and later gloating over new acquisitions. Although Christie's taste in collectables was essentially Victorian, Greenway's simple colour scheme gives it the feel of a Modernist interior and a distinct sense that it has slid to an easy halt somewhere in the sunny Fifties or Sixties.

I take a walk down to the boathouse, zigzagging down through what feel like distinct climatic zones; glossy laurels and camellias giving way to delicate bamboos and shrubs as the land slides into the water. The boathouse looks out across slippery seaweed steps (a swift push, perhaps by a butler with a tray of cocktails… it's difficult not to start planning murders) to the Scold's Stone, marked by a red flag in mid-channel. This is where disobedient wives were apparently trussed up to drown in medieval times; those who failed to do so were stoned to death. I have a feeling that the camellia garden along the path was where Crale met his death at the bottom of a beer glass. In the end, I scuttle back up to the house, happier to be strolling through the walled gardens to see the peach and nectarine houses slumped against a south-facing wall, and soon to be restored to their full, fragrant glory.

As my visit ends, calls are coming in from France, Russia, China, Australia and elsewhere, requesting filming permission, visits and interviews. The house has filled with National Trust personnel assessing the best ways for visitors to be moved efficiently through the rooms.

The builders are finishing the visitor centre and running last-minute checks on the green heating and waste disposal systems. The smart new shop is being stocked with Trust products and Agatha Christie novels. There is a sense that nothing will ever be the same again at Greenway; all those billions of words are coming home to roost.

The Queen of Mystery: Discover the World of Agatha Christie

 

Critic’s Notebook

The Mysterious Case of the Real Agatha Christie

 

At the British Library, visitors are invited to sift through a lifetime of clues to uncover the woman behind the world’s best-selling crime novels.

 

By Rosa Lyster

Reporting from London

Nov. 4, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/04/books/agatha-christie-british-library.html?searchResultPosition=1

 

One evening in the early 1960s, the 72-year-old Agatha Christie put on a sparkly dress and went to a party at the Savoy Hotel in London. It was a celebration of the 10th anniversary of her play “The Mousetrap,” which had, at that point, been seen by 1.5 million people.

Christie was famously publicity shy, but even so, she stood in front of the assembled guests and made a speech for the cameras. She thanked everyone for coming, emphasized her surprise that the play had run for so long — she had thought it would run for only eight months — and, in general, struck a remarkably diffident pose. If this had happened in one of her books, she said, “it really wouldn’t be a person like me who had written a play that had run for years.” She smiled at her delighted audience, displaying what can only be described as a set of old-fashioned English teeth.

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A display evoking the style of country house that featured in Christie’s tales.Credit...Sam Bush for The New York Times

Footage of the speech can be seen in the final room of the British Library’s charming new show “Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery.” Watching, I was surprised at how thin and reedy her voice sounded — and how grand. She says “gretitude” and “ectors” and manages to squeeze a whole lot of extra vowel sounds into the word “old.” But I would probably have been surprised no matter what her voice sounded like.

For someone with a career as dense with superlatives as hers — author of the longest-running play of all time (“The Mousetrap” is celebrating its 75th anniversary this month), best-selling novelist of all time, most translated author of all time, a woman who has moved beyond “household name” status into something like “pillar of civilization” status — she remains an elusive and misunderstood figure.

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A typewriter that once belonged to Christie.Credit...Sam Bush for The New York Times; courtesy Christie Archive Trust

Because she spent most of her outrageously successful career avoiding the spotlight, people have tended to fill in the blanks by conflating her with Miss Marple, one of her most beloved creations, and have projected onto her the qualities of a snuggly old village busybody who never ventured too far outside the parish.

The British Library show’s stated aim is to dismantle this false picture and reveal the real woman behind the books. From room to room, visitors move through a series of settings that will be immediately recognizable to Christie’s fans, and to people who have never read her books but have nevertheless absorbed her influence through osmosis: the country house, the dispensary, the train car, the archaeological dig.

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Elements like an old train car will be familiar even to those who haven’t read Christie’s books.Credit...Sam Bush for The New York Times

It’s fun. Visitors are invited to treat the show as a case to be cracked, to view the material on display as clues that will not only reveal the truth about the woman who left them behind, but also, per the wall text, “uncover the secrets of her success.”

The strategy is partly effective. The idea of Christie as a matronly vicarage-fete type does not, for instance, survive contact with photographs on display in the archaeological dig section, which details her life with her second husband, Max Mallowan, an archaeologist 14 years her junior. Here, an image of an adventurous and unconventional life emerges.

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Christie’s passport in which she lists her profession as “married woman.”Credit...Sam Bush for The New York Times; courtesy Christie Archive Trust

For most of the 1930s and 1940s, Christie and Mallowan spent several months each year in what is now Iraq, living and working on digs together. It was an extremely productive period for Christie. It seemed she could write almost anywhere, and during that time she published an average of two books per year.

One of my favorite things in the show was a slightly out of focus photograph of Christie at work at her desk on site in Nineveh, near Mosul, in a simply furnished room with light streaming through the window onto her typewriter. It’s almost a parody of an ideal writing life.

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A photograph of Christie working at a desk in Nineveh, near Mosul in present-day Iraq.Credit...Sam Bush for The New York Times

When she wasn’t churning out novels, she was assisting Mallowan and his team. Also in the show are delicate ivory plaques from the 9th to the 7th century B.C., a sphinx and a male figure, accompanied by an explanation that Christie used her face cream to clean the ancient carvings. As she later recounted, “There was nothing left for my poor old face for a couple of weeks.”

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Ivory plaques from the 9th to the 7th century B.C. that Christie cleaned using her face cream.Credit...Sam Bush for The New York Times; courtesy British Museum

Equally surprising are Christie’s notebooks, which she used to work out plots and characterization, grinding through possibilities before arriving at her elegant solutions. In the “Dispensary” section, which explores her work as a pharmacist’s dispenser at a hospital during World War I, there is a notebook opened to a page with the penciled heading “Poisons: Possibilities for Books,” with details of effects and fatal doses.

There is also a notebook in the section that deals a breakdown Christie suffered in 1926, which happened after her mother died and she discovered that her first husband had been unfaithful. Christie fled to a hotel and checked in under the last name of her husband’s mistress, hiding out for 11 days while a nationwide search for her went on. (A “Missing” poster on display explains that she was wearing “a small green velour hat” at the time of her disappearance.)

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A notebook in which Christie, who worked as a pharmacist’s dispenser during World War I, made notes on “Poisons: Possibilities for Books,” with details of effects and fatal doses.Credit...Sam Bush for The New York Times; courtesy Christie Archive Trust

Christie’s explanation that she developed sudden amnesia is hard to square with what is known about the condition, but a notebook from around the time of her disappearance gives some idea of the strain she was under. It shows her laborious efforts to meet her daily word count for a book she was writing, “The Mystery of the Blue Train.” She usually seems to have found writing easy, but this notebook shows her grimly counting each chapter’s words.

Elsewhere, however, the show’s attempt to address misconceptions about Christie serves only to deepen the mystery. In a display of Christie’s passports, we see that her profession is first stated as “author” — but that later on, at the height of her writing success, she chose to describe herself as a “married woman.” In her autobiography, Christie says that being a wife was her status and her occupation, and that “as a sideline, I wrote books.” This self-effacement is as baffling, in its way, as her shock over having written a successful play.

Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery
Through June 20 at the British Library in London; events.bl.uk.

Remembering ... Ten Dukes gathered together.

Ten dukes-a-dining: Gathered together over lunch for a unique picture, the grandees with £2bn and 340,000 acres between them

By ROBERT HARDMAN

UPDATED: 11:21 GMT, 7 October 2009 / http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218628/Ten-dukes-dining-Gathered-lunch-unique-picture-grandees-2bn-340-000-acres-them.html

At first glance, it might resemble the board meeting of a firm of auctioneers or a convention of prep school headmasters.

On closer inspection, it is actually a remarkable portrait of the grandest club in Britain, a super-elite who account for some 340,000 acres, more than £2billion and 4,505 years of aristocratic moving and shaking.

Some owe their fortunes to bravery in battle, others to royal philandering or political chicanery. But they are all distantly related to each other and they are all addressed in exactly the same way: Your Grace.

Outside the Royal Family, dukedoms have only ever been granted to a handful of men of power and influence.

Dukes are just one rung down from royalty in the social pecking order and enjoy a special status way above the rank and file of the aristocracy. As peerages go, it's the jackpot.

Today, there are just 24 non-royal dukes in existence, down from a total of 40 in their Georgian heyday. And it's fair to say that no modern monarch or government is likely to create any more.

So, to celebrate its 300th birthday, Tatler magazine decided to invite this dwindling band of mega-toffs to a ducal lunch. The result was the largest gathering of dukes since the Coronation of 1953.

Some were too frail to attend. Some live abroad. But ten of them gathered for oysters and Dover sole in London's clubland. And the result is this intriguing study of 21st century nobility.

'After 300 years, we wanted to recapture the spirit of the original Tatler, and what better than a room full of dukes,' says Tatler editor Catherine Ostler.

Once, the holders of these titles would have been the A-list celebrities of their time. Today, most people would be pushed to name a single one of them.

With hereditary peers cast out into the political wilderness, dukes might seem little more than a comic anachronism in modern Britain. While they retain their rank and social clout, their only power is financial.

In the case of, say, the Duke of Bedford, this amounts to £500million in art, London property and a large slab of Home Counties commuter belt. As for the Duke of Leinster, whose grandfather ran a teashop, it is next to nothing.

Yet many dukes still play an active part in public life. The Duke of Norfolk, as hereditary Earl Marshal, is still responsible for organising the State Opening of Parliament and any coronations which should occur.

The Duke of Northumberland runs several public bodies across the North East while his wife is the local Lord Lieutenant.

The very first dukedom was a royal affair. In 1337, Edward III created his son, the Black Prince, the Duke of Cornwall. The title derives from the Latin dux - leader - and, throughout history, fewer than 500 British men have held the rank of 'Duke'.

The last non-royal dukedom was created in 1900 for the former Earl of Fife, who was upgraded to Duke following his wedding to Queen Victoria's granddaughter.

There might have been a new one in 1955 when the Queen offered one to Churchill, but he declined, preferring to die a commoner.

The only non-duke at the Tatler gathering was historian Andrew Roberts, invited to chronicle the event.

'They're all related and they all stick up for each other,' he recalls.

But he fears that dukes could become an endangered species. 'Not long ago, two important dukedoms - Newcastle and Portland - became extinct,' says the historian.

'So, my parting plea to the dukes was simple, even if it startled some of them. I simply said: 'Keep procreating!'

The assembled: (from left to right) 1. James Graham, 8th Duke of Montrose; 2. David Manners, 11th Duke of Rutland; 3. John Seymour, 19th Duke of Somerset; 4. Ralph Percy, 12th Duke of Northumberland; 5. Andrew Russell, 15th Duke of Bedford; 6. Edward Fizalan-Howard, 18th Duke of Norfolk; 7. Torquhil Campbell, 18th Duke of Argyll; 8. Maurice FitzGerald, 9th Duke of Leinster; 9. Murray Beauclerk, 14th Duke of St Albans; 10. Arthur Wellesey, 8th Duke of Wellington. See list below for details

A very special edition: The picture appears in the November issue of Tatler magazine

1 James Graham, 8th Duke of Montrose

Age: 72.

Title created: 1707. Other titles include Viscount Dundaff and Lord Aberuthven, Mugdock and Fintrie.

Seat: Auchmar, a modest estate near Loch Lomond.

Wealth: A high-ranking, but lower league landowner with 8,800 acres valued at around £1 million in 2001.

History: The dukedom was awarded for supporting the Act of Union in 1707. The sixth Duke helped to invent the aircraft carrier during World War I. The present Duke spent part of his childhood in a mud hut in Rhodesia (where his father was building a farm). Instead of the usual Eton education, he attended Loretto School in Edinburgh - just like the Chancellor, Alistair Darling.

2 David Manners, 11th Duke of Rutland

Age: 50.

Title created: 1703. Other titles include Marquess of Granby and Baron Roos of Belvoir.

Seat: Belvoir Castle, Leicestershire.

Wealth: Ranked 474th in the latest Rich List, he is valued at £115 million. Estates across Leicestershire (12,000 acres), Derbyshire (10,000 acres), Cambridgeshire (4,000 acres) and Lincolnshire (2,000 acres).

History: While the main seat, Belvoir, is a magnificent 365-room pile with an underground railway and £100 million of art, the family also owns Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, widely recognised as one of Britain's finest medieval and Tudor manor houses. A previous Marquess of Granby (later the third duke) was a popular soldier and helped many of his men with their retirement, hence the number of pubs called the Marquess of Granby.

3 John Seymour, 19th Duke of Somerset

Age: 56. Title created: 1547. His other title is Lord Seymour.

Seat: Maiden Bradley, Somerset.

Wealth: Around 5,000 acres of Somerset, including several villages.

History: He is a descendant of Jane Seymour, Henry VIII's third wife. The first Duke of Somerset, Edward Seymour, was Jane's brother.

The family owns the fourposter oak bed in which Edward VI is said to have been conceived.

Having rented out his main house at £50,000 a year, the Duke runs the estate from a smaller house in Devon.

4 Ralph Percy, 12th Duke of Northumberland

Age: 52.

Title created: 1766. Other titles include Earl Percy, Earl of Beverley, Baron Warkworth.

Seat: Alnwick Castle, Northumberland.

Wealth: With 132,000 acres, Syon Park in West London and a substantial art collection, he is valued at £300 million and ranked No. 178 on the latest Rich List.

History: Part of the original Norman Conquest gang, the Percy family have been dominant in their part of the country for centuries. Alnwick Castle is the authentic knight-in-shining-armour fortress and has featured in Blackadder and the Harry Potter films. The present Duke recently sold a Raphael painting to the nation for £22 million, a deal which attracted controversy because of the use of Lottery funds. The newly-refurbished Alnwick Garden is a major tourist attraction.

5 Andrew Russell, 15th Duke of Bedford

Age: 47.

Title created: 1694. Other titles include Marquess of Tavistock and Baron Howland

Seat: Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire

Wealth: Valued at £489million. Owns 23,000 acres and prime central London real estate.

History: The first Duke fought on both sides in the Civil War and was ennobled after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The family has made Woburn Abbey a major tourist attraction and the present Duke is busy refurbishing much of the London estate (significantly smaller than it once was after much of it became part of London University).

The family were stars of the BBC's Country House series.

6 Edward Fizalan-Howard, 18th Duke of Norfolk

Age: 53.

Title created: 1483. Other titles include Earl of Surrey and Baron Maltravers.

Seat: Arundel Castle, West Sussex.

Wealth: Half his 30,000 acres are in leafy West Sussex, while the family also owns a ten-acre parcel of London valued at £100 million in 2001.

History: As England's senior duke, Norfolk carries the hereditary title of Earl Marshal. As such, he plays an important role in running state occasions. The family's royal links stretch back centuries and the present Duke's wife, Georgina, stands in for the Queen at rehearsals of the State Opening of Parliament. The Duke's eldest son and heir, Henry, the Earl of Arundel, 21, is a promising Formula Three driver.

7 Torquhil Campbell, 13th Duke of Argyll

Age: 41.

Title created: 1701. Other titles include Marquess of Kintyre and Lorne, Viscount Lochow and Glenilla and Lord Morvern.

Seat: Inveraray Castle, Argyllshire.

Wealth: Family owns 60,000 acres of Scotland, valued at £12.5m in 2001.

History: The dukedom comes with plenty of baggage, including the hereditary posts of Master of HM's Household in Scotland and Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland.

The family suffered serious scandal in the Sixties, when the divorce proceedings of the 11th duke unearthed a famous photograph of his soon-to-be former wife with a mysterious naked man. The present duke, when not working in the whisky trade, is captain of the Scottish elephant polo team.

8 Maurice FitzGerald, 9th Duke of Leinster

Age: 61.

Title created: 1766. Other titles include Marquess of Kildare and Earl of Offaly

Seat: Formerly Carton House, Co. Kildare. Now a farmhouse in Oxfordshire.

Wealth: No landholdings of any note, the Duke works as a landscape gardener.

History: The FitzGeralds assisted Edward I in his battles against the Scots. The family fortunes declined in the 20th century after the 7th Duke sold his interests in the family estates and was then declared bankrupt. His fourth wife, with whom he opened a teashop in Rye in 1965, was the caretaker of the block of flats in which he lived. Educated at Millfield, the present Duke is president of the Oxfordshire Dyslexia Association.

9 Murray Beauclerk, 14th Duke of St Albans

Age: 70. Title created: 1684. Other titles include Earl of Burford, and Baron Heddington.

Seat: A terrace house in Knightsbridge, London.

Wealth: Never a great landowning family, the Beauclerks were said to own 4,000 acres, worth £12m, in 2001.

History: The first Duke was the illegitimate son of Charles II and Nell Gwyn. Though the present Duke is a Tonbridge-educated chartered accountant, an eccentric strain still runs through family.

His heir, the Earl of Burford, has long campaigned to prove his ancestor, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, was the true author of the works of Shakespeare. In 1999, the young Earl was forcibly expelled from the House of Lords for jumping on the Woolsack and accusing the Government of treason in its expulsion of hereditary peers.

10 Arthur Wellesley, 8th Duke of Wellington

Age: 94.

Title created: 1814. Other titles include Prince of Waterloo, Duke of Vittoria and Earl of Mornington.

Seat: Stratfield Saye House, Hampshire and Apsley House, London.

Wealth: 7,000-acre Hampshire estate, 20,000 acres of Belgium and Spain. Thought to be worth £50m in 2001.

History: Like the original Iron Duke, the present Duke had a long Army career, winning the Military Cross and reaching the rank of Brigadier. In later life, he has devoted himself to his estates and charities, coming top in Country Life's 'Good Duke Guide' in 1991. His heir, the Marquess of Douro, is a former Tory MEP while his daughter, Lady Jane Wellesley, was once talked of as a bride for the Prince of Wales. More recent beaux include Melvyn Bragg and Loyd Grossman.

We Tracked Every British Duke. Here’s Who Still Owns the House

 

Prince Harry wants a reconciliation - but it won’t happen his way | The Royal T

 

In today’s episode of The Royal T, Camilla Tominey and Hannah Furness speak to Arthur Edwards, a royal photographer who has been following the British Royal Family for the past 50 years, ahead of the release of his new book ‘Cup of Tea, Arthur?: My Extraordinary 50 Years Photographing the Royal Family’. He runs through some of his biggest photo scoops, including the first time he met and photographed Diana, Princess of Wales, as well as his disagreements with then Prince Charles, who Arthur says has “matured” over the years as he has taken the throne. Arthur, who works as The Sun’s principle royal photographer for over half a century, also explains why he thinks the Royal Family needs a figure like Prince Harry, who he once considered the institution’s “star”, and why Arthur believes reconciliation in the form the Duke of Sussex would like it, won’t happen.

Cup of Tea, Arthur?: My Extraordinary 50 Years Photographing the Royal Family, a must have for 2026

by Arthur Edwards (Author)  Format: Kindle Edition

#1 Best Seller

in Celebrity Photography

 

'Arthur’s experience in the role is unparalleled and this is a truly captivating memoir of an extraordinary career, told by the man the royals themselves seek out in the crowd.' Emily Nash.

 

‘Arthur Edwards is one of the greatest newspaper photographers in history and a man whose professionalism and charm have made him liked and respected by many members of the royal family.’ Piers Morgan

 

After half a century in the best job in the world, I have covered two hundred royal tours in more than a hundred and twenty countries, photographed seven royal weddings, five funerals, seven births, three Jubilees and a coronation.

 

For more than fifty years, Arthur Edwards has been the definitive photographer of the British royal family, capturing their most private and historic moments.

 

This beautifully illustrated memoir traces Arthur's remarkable journey from growing up as the son of a lorry driver in London’s East End, to earning the trust of the Royal Family and becoming a close friend to King Charles and Queen Camilla.

 

Now, Arthur tells his stories behind the photographs – revealing the moments he had previously kept private, and the untold stories behind his remarkable access to the most photographed family in the world.

 

They say the harder you work, the luckier you get.

 

‘He’s a very good photographer, a jolly good bloke and a very special person.’ King Charles III

REMEMBERING 6 Nov 2024: Where is Lord Lucan? | Lucan | Official Trailer - BBC / Lucan review

 

Review

Lucan review – stick with this wild documentary to the end and you will be astonished

 

Fifty years ago, Lord Lucan murdered Sandra Rivett then disappeared. This surreal series follows the victim’s son as he hunts down the fugitive peer – and ends up somewhere totally unexpected

 

Rebecca Nicholson

Wed 6 Nov 2024 22.00 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/nov/06/lord-lucan-bbc-documentary-review

 

Richard John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan, was declared dead in 1999, but that did nothing to halt the highly profitable cottage industry of speculation about him, which has chugged away since 1974, when he murdered Sandra Rivett, his children’s nanny, then disappeared.

 

At first glance, you might think that this three-part documentary will be another contribution to this conspiracy-minded canon. But this is not a “have we found him?” film. I cannot emphasise enough how much it is worth sticking with it until the end. What unspools is a sometimes tender, sometimes troubling rollercoaster that ends up in surreal and unexpected territory. There is a fake monk, catfishing, drag queens and Timothy Leary. You have probably not seen this side of the Lord Lucan story before.

 

The first episode is the most straightforward. The film-maker Colette Camden has found a new way of outlining what happened on 7 November 1974. A builder in Hampshire called Neil Berriman thinks he has tracked down Lucan, she explains. (There is a strong argument that the true subject of the episodes is Berriman, not Lucan.) Berriman’s mother, who had adopted him, would talk to him about a “brown envelope” containing information about his biological parents. For years, he wasn’t interested in even looking for it, but when he did eventually open it, it delivered a shock: newspaper cuttings about one of Britain’s most notorious crimes of the 20th century. It revealed that his birth mother was Rivett, the woman who had been looking after Lucan’s children for mere weeks when he bludgeoned her to death.

 

As you would expect from a modern documentary, and one which involves Rivett’s son, this shifts its emphasis from the headline-generating exploits of the “fugitive Lord” – the profligate gambler and drunk, known to his friends, ironically, as “Lucky” – to the 29-year-old woman whom he murdered, the justice he eluded and the consequences of this violent crime for those left behind.

 

Berriman has made it his mission to learn everything he can about the case – seemingly to the concern of his family – and episode one provides an overview of what he has discovered. There are interviews with people who knew Rivett, who knew Lucan, who attended the crime scene; and with people who, like Berriman, have made the investigation their primary focus (although without having the same personal attachment).

 

It is here that the series starts to rev up and speed off into the distance, where it shape-shifts into something else entirely. Berriman has spent years working with the investigative reporter Glen Campbell, who has reported on the case extensively (and called his dog Lucan). They have pursued countless theories and potential sightings. The film joins them as they are on their way to confront a man they have tracked down in Australia, whom they seem certain is the aristocrat.

 

To watch this with a critical eye is to notice that we, the viewers, cannot see or hear much of their evidence: a confidential police report that would compromise the job of the person who leaked it; a detail given off‑camera by Lucan’s brother. There are a lot of people saying “bullshit”. Often, there is no clear sense of what is true and what the people at the heart of this story want to believe. (There is, however, a clear sense of how much some of these men will make excuses for a friend who brutally murdered a woman – a small but deeply depressing detail.)

 

It is not a rigorous investigation so much as an empathic portrait of human obsession. Camden is evidently fond of Berriman, and her involvement in the story grows more pronounced as the episodes progress. I kept thinking of The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcolm’s classic study of journalistic ethics and the relationship between reporter and subject, wondering to what extent this documentary exists in a murky area. The programme gives Berriman (and, by extension, Rivett) a voice – and it’s hard to deny that he deserves that voice.

 

By the time Lucan explodes into its surreal final act, you will be feeling astonished and uneasy about some of the people caught up in the whirlwind of pursuit. This extraordinary documentary lingers in the mind and leaves a lot more questions behind it than whether or not Lucan lived beyond 1974.

 

 Lucan airs on BBC Two and is available on BBC iPlayer