The Era
Many of Christie's novels were inspired by her early interest in Egypt. She was 17 when she first visited Cairo with her convalescing mother and described it as "a dream of delight". When she married her second husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan, she got the opportunity to visit Egypt again accompanying him on his many expeditions to the Middle East.
A Nile Cruise
Extracted from Magazine 1 in The Poirot Collection
“For those who could afford it, a trip aboard a Nile cruise ship was an ideal way to escape the British winter. With the rise of tourism in the 1930s, travel to exotic locations was becoming increasingly popular and accessible… The Times were full of adverts for cruises in luxurious paddle steamers like the Karnak… a typical timetable for a Nile cruise, as featured in an edition of The Times from October 1937, suggested the following schedule of typically English entertainments: ”Thursday: As a change from sightseeing, a round of golf… followed by lunch, and then either tennis or witnessing a polo game… A tea dance at one of the leading hotels would fill in the time before dinner. The evening might be rounded off by a visit to see whatever English theatrical company is holding a season of plays… ”.”
Class and Money
Extracted from Magazine 1 in The Poirot Collection
Financial ruin
“During the 1930s, the UK was already undergoing long-term change and the economic slump following World War I had resulted in mass unemployment. In Germany, meanwhile, Hitler was becoming increasingly powerful. As Ferguson comments in the film: “ … millions unemployed, a lunatic about to take over Germany, and all we’re concerned with is how some spoiled brat ditched a lord for her best friend’s boyfriend.” … The economic slump is pivotal to the story of Death on the Nile. At the beginning of the film, we learn that Jacqueline’s mother “lost all her money in the crash”, while her lover Simon has been laid off from his job… because they are “ cutting down”. America was also still suffering from the disastrous effects of Black Thursday (24 Oct 1929) end the ensuing Wall Street Crash.”
Class lines
“The divide between the wealthy upper class and the working class was as wide as ever. Linnet - idle, arrogant, privileged and moneyed - has little regard for the suffering of others. She contemptuously dismisses her maid’s plea for help to bail out her boyfriend from jail by laughingly saying that “prison’s the best place for him” and that “she’ll get over it”. Joanna’s caustic comment - “Isn’t it awful when one’s friends fall on hard times? One simply has to drop them” - shows how fickle and shallow the upper classes of the time were perceived to be”.
Liberated women
“The party on the Nile cruise is made up mainly of women. As a result of the suffragette movement at the turn of the century and World War I, women were enjoying more social freedom than they had done previously. Young ladies like Jacqueline, who has followed Linnet and Simon around Europe, could travel abroad without chaperones… At the hotel dinner in Egypt, Salome Otterbourne asks Poirot to dance. “We are liberated now” she adds, explaining her audacity. “I was a great supporter of the suffragettes”.
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