Lecture Date: April 11, 2017
A Chancellor's Village Lecture
English crime novelist, short story writer, and playwright Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie (1890-1976) is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the best-selling novelist of all time, having sold approximately 2 billion copies. Her works are said to be third in the all-time ranking of books, following only the Bible and the works of Shakespeare –having been translated into more than 100 languages. Two of the main characters in her crime novels, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, are among the best-known fictional characters in all of literature. Her stage play, The Mousetrap , which opened in 1952, holds the record for the longest initial run, with over 25,000 performances. The life behind these remarkable accomplishments will be the focus of Professor Jeremy Black’s lecture.
Speaker: Jeremy Black
Jeremy Black is a popular and dynamic lecturer who has appeared multiple times in the Great Lives series. Having studied at Cambridge and Oxford, he began his teaching career at the University of Durham in 1980 before moving to Exeter University in 1996, where he is the current holder of the Established Chair in History. In addition to his teaching, Professor Black has held a number of important public roles, including that of editor of Archives, the journal of the British Records Association. His prodigious scholarly output encompasses more than 100 publications, mainly on, but not limited to, British and continental European history, with particular emphasis on international relations and military history. He has held numerous teaching positions outside of England, having lectured extensively in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, and Denmark—as well as in the US, where he has taught at the Universities of Maryland, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgetown, and Rutgers, among others.