A Very British Murder #TVReview #RIPXVI #BriFri

Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish - reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!

Last week, I designed a fantasy walking tour in London of the important sites in the history of the Ratcliffe Highway Murders. Tina reviewed Her Secret War by Pam Lecky.

Earlier in R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril season, I was disappointed because I didn't seem to have an easy and free way to get my hands on A Very British Murder, the television documentary series hosted by Lucy Worsley, my favorite British historian. I got the companion book, The Art of the English Murder, from the library, but the DVDs of the show weren't in the library catalog.

That's when I noticed that the bonus features I ignored on the Miss Marple series were, in fact, A Very British Murder - one part in each of the three volumes of the disk sets. I had to re-request Volume 1 from the library, when I figured this out, so that I could start from the beginning.

The stories told in A Very British Murder are a subset of those in The Art of the English Murder. Just like in the book, Lucy Worsley begins with the Ratcliffe Highway Murders. So, I got to see, on video, some of the same scenes that I saw on Google Street View while making last week's fantasy walking tour.

As in other Lucy Worsley documentaries, we meet experts, visit historic locations, and witness Lucy and others in costume portraying the characters, real and imaginary, of the stories she tells. Her videos are such a fun way to learn British history.

I really enjoyed R.eader's I.mbibing P.eril this year.

Here's how all the posts fit together in my mind.

I made a fantasy trip to Harrogate, knowing that would be a topic of discussion when I reviewed two recent documentaries about Agatha Christie. just in time for her 131st birthday. That felt like a good time to read a book or two by Agatha Christie. I read Nemesis (a Miss Marple story) on the 50th anniversary of its publication and The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Christie's first book, which featured Hercule Poirot) on the 100th anniversary of its publication. In between those two books, I found another documentary, The Mystery of Agatha Christie, hosted by David Suchet, the actor who portrayed Hercule Poirot. I enjoyed watching (possibly re-watching) the entire series of the TV Miss Marple, played by Joan Hickson.

All that Agatha Christie made me curious about the British murder mystery more generally, so I read the book The Art of English Murder by Lucy Worsley. That book inspired my fantasy walking tour of The Ratcliffe Highway Murders, complete with interactive map. And, of course, today's post about Lucy Worsley's show on the same topic as her book.

Happy Halloween to all the bloggers and blog readers who participated in RIPXVI!

About Joy Weese Moll

a librarian writing about books