Dr Mark Aldridge (he/him)

Mark is an Agatha Christie historian and speaker. His books include Agatha Christie's Marple: Expert on Wickedness (HarperCollins, 2024), Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World (HarperCollins, 2020) and Agatha Christie on Screen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 

Mark regularly speaks at Agatha Christie events, including at the International Agatha Christie Festival, which takes place in Torquay each year, and the Agatha Christie Festival Internacional, held in Puerto de la Cruz (Tenerife) every other year. He grew up in South Devon, not far from Agatha Christie's beloved Torquay.

Mark is Associate Professor of Screen Histories at Solent University, Southampton. Beyond Agatha Christie, his main research interests concern British television history and drama. His publications on this topic include T is for Television: The Small Screen Adventures of Russell T Davies (Reynolds & Hearn, 2008), written with Andy Murray (not that one).

Gray is a writer. As a playwright, he has been longlisted for the Old Vic New Voices 12, the Theatre 503 International Playwriting Prize, and the Papatango Prize (twice). He has also been shortlisted by the Papatango Prize, the Oxford Playhouse Playmaker scheme, and the Traverse Theatre Breakthrough scheme (twice). His stageplay Sugar is currently in development as a TV sitcom, and he has contributed a story for the Ladybird Stories for Pride audio collection for children (2024). 

In 2022 he presented a paper titled “Famous Last Words: Agatha Christie’s Curtain and Sleeping Murder” at the Golden Age of Crime Conference at Bournemouth University, where he first met co-host Mark. He presented his second paper, “'Cruelty mixed with camp': the parallel lives and works of Agatha Christie and Muriel Spark” the following year. His day job is making audiobooks for Penguin. He has been fascinated by Agatha Christie since childhood and grew up a mere eight miles from her former home in Wallingford.