Death on the nile

"Woke” is a term much overused by those on both sides of the culture war but — a little like pornography — while it may be difficult to define, you absolutely know it when you see it. The capture of the entertainment industry by an ideology — perhaps more accurately described as a group of roughly consanguineous ideas that seem, superficially, to be the Right, Kind and Thoughtful beliefs to hold — seems now to be absolute. Fiction of all kinds has been affected, but heroic narratives have proved especially vulnerable, perhaps because of the size and dedication of their audiences. You will doubtless know the kind of thing I mean.

Some fiction, regardless of how intimately tethered to a time and place, is timeless. And the work of Agatha Christie certainly seems that way. Christie's novel Death on the Nile is now receiving renewed cinematic treatment under the expert hand of Kenneth Branagh, with the film scheduled for release on February 11. This follows the success of Branagh’s 2017 adaption of Murder on the Orient Express, which grossed $351 million against a production budget of $55 million. “Rest assured," says Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in Christie’s novel Five Little Pigs. "I am the best!” The same might be said of Christie herself, the world’s all-time bestselling fiction author.