The 8:55 to Baghdad: From London to Iraq on the Trail of Agatha Christie and theOrient Express

By Andrew Eames

In 1928, Agatha Christie, the world's most widely read author, was a thirty-something single mother. With her marriage to her first husband, Archie Christie, over, she decided to take a much needed holiday; the Caribbean had been her intended destination, but a conversation at a dinner party with a couple who had just returned from Iraq changed her mind. Five days later she was off on a completely different trajectory.

Merging literary biography with travel adventure, and ancient history with contemporary world events, Andrew Eames tells a riveting tale and reveals fascinating and little-knowndetails en route in this exotic chapter in the life of Agatha Christie. His own trip from London to Baghdad--a journey much more difficult to make in 2002 with the political unrest in the Middle East and the war in Iraq, than it was in 1928--becomes ineluctably intertwined with Agatha's, and the people he meets could have stepped out of a mystery novel.

Fans of Agatha Christie will delight in Eames' description of the places and events that appeared in andinfluenced her fiction--and armchair travelers will thrill in the exotica of the journey itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: May 2, 2006
• ISBN: 9781590209165

Reviews for The 8:55 to Baghdad

[seriousgrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In 2002 Eames embarked on a (mostly) train journey from London, England to Iraq to follow in the footsteps of mystery author Agatha Christie. It is a beyond brilliant idea for Eames is able to weave together a travelogue of his own experiences, historical snapshots of the regions he traverses and an abbreviated biography of one of the world's best known crime writers of the century. Eames's journey takes him through Belgium, France, Switzerland, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Syria; ending in Damascus on the eve of the Gulf War.

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A nice idea, combining travel writing with a minibiography of Agatha Christie. Shame it drags on too long.

[carltonc_5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This feels like a first attempt at a travel book, with a good idea - retracing the journey that Agatha Christie made after her failed first marriage to Baghdad by train (Orient Express).However it felt a bit forced and the author did not interweave his personal journey and that of Agatha Christie in a smooth manner. Overall it was interesting, both the contemporary story and that of Agatha Christie's, but it felt somewhat disjointed.

[samsattler · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The premise of The 8:55 to Baghdad is that its author will recreate Agatha Christie's 1928 train trip from London to Baghdad, the trip that spawned her famous Murder on the Orient Express. The book's subtitle, From London to Iraq on the Trail of Agatha Christie, tells readers what to expect. As Eames remarks early in the book, making this trip in 2002 is much more difficult, and potentially much more dangerous, than the trip that Christie took. World War II and other recent conflicts in Europe have redrawn some borders and made them more difficult to cross, and the political unrest and actual fighting in the Middle East was, in 2002, getting worse by the month.I have read and enjoyed several train-trip books in the past and expected that this one would be a treat, filled with interesting fellow passengers of the author's and lots of colorful stories about the stops he made along the way. That might very well prove to be the case - eventually - but after slogging through 60 pages of some of the more tedious prose I've read in a while, I will never know. I simply cannot take another page of lifeless characters and writing so dry that I can barely concentrate on two consecutive sentences long enough to get their meaning.The 8:55 to Baghdad is definitely not for me and I am stamping it as officially abandoned.

[majorbabs · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Follows the current "Orient Express" route from London to Iraq.

[mramos_710291 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Andrew Eames a British journalist recounts his travels by train in 2002 from London to Baghdad. He replicates the journey that Agatha Christie took back in 1928. Eames interweaves the account of his own adventures in the tumultuous Middle East with Christie's life story, providing background on the culture and history of the places en route. This is an interesting travelogue that is informative and worth reading.

[msbaba · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Why would anyone still read a travelogue in this, the beginning of the 21st century, when it was so easy to find outstanding independent film travel documentaries, many prepared by only one or two individuals at most? Certainly this visual medium combined with well-edited documentary realism and well-scripted travel guide dialog would serve better than print for the purpose of introducing a novice to a new culture, people, or place. But a modern-day print-based travelogue was what our book club leader assigned for our next book. That is how I came to read The 8:55 to Baghdad by Andrew Eames. I am glad I did. In 2003, on the eve of the second Gulf War, seasoned English travel-writer Andrew Eames retraced the famous train trip that Agatha Christie made 75 years earlier on the Orient Express from London to Baghdad. Thus this book is a delightful hybrid—part history and biography of Christie, part travelogue concerning a unique trip through parts of the world where few Westerners choose to travel, and part transcribed candid conversations with strangers and interviews with local dignitaries that the author hooked up with during this travels. Thankfully, Eames knew better than to bore us with the familiar. Most of the travelogue deals with the wholly unique—parts of the trip where the typical Western traveler has little to no experience. I am speaking of countries like Croatia, Serbia, Syria, and Iraq, as well as little travel portions of Hungary and Turkey. Personally, I was only mildly interested in the Christie history. What interested me most was the candid conversations that the author was able to have with strangers everywhere along his travels. These conversations often open up a whole new perspective on world politics. Eames was able to pick up some amazingly straightforward points of view about important topics from complete strangers. This is what kept me glued to the book. Take for example: 1) The conversation Eames had with a Belgrade businessman who genuinely felt that what Serbia needed was another war in order to jump start its stagnant economy. The man says: "Today, Serbia is old news. Now there's 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq, we're not important any more. Everyone's left or leaving and all the money is going elsewhere. That's why we need another war. To bring back the budgets." The author politely inquires against who the war should be. "Dunno. Someone will pop up. They always do" (p. 141).2) The conversation Eames had with a fellow train traveler in rural Turkey about President Bush: "You have traveled. I have traveled. We understand each other. But President Bush? Has he traveled? What is that expression—travel broadens the mind? I wonder if he would still be demonizing the Islamic world if he'd come here on his holidays" (p. 205). A few pages later, while the author is still conversing with the same Turkish passenger, they start talking about Iraq. The man says: " Iraq will probably be a better place without Saddam Hussein, but the war must not go on for too long. Might is only right for a limited time; look at Genghis Khan. Justice, that is the important thing. If the U.S. treats Iraq with justice, then I don't think there'll be any backlash from here. But if America shows itself to be greedy, then it'll be a problem. A real problem." Then the conversation turns naturally to Israel and we get this candid comment: "There you see it, comes the problem of justice. There is no justice, not for the people of Palestine. For them Israel sets the parameters and inflicts the penalties. Imagine if a foreign power claimed the heart of London, and you could do nothing because it had a big, powerful bully of a friend. Well...I have Jewish friends, but we can't talk about it. It is such an injustice, and it is deeply felt elsewhere in the world. Deeply felt" (p. 209).3) Or the conversation he had with a Canadian engineer on the border between Turkey and Syria. Eames asks the man if he thinks there is going to be a war. The man who builds grain silos for a living says that he does not think so, "Don't think the Syrians do either. How could there be, with so little pretext?" But what about the oil, the author asks. "No way; Even Big George wouldn't do anything so cynical. No, I tell you what...I predict that water, not oil, will be the next big justification for war. The Syrian aquifers are going down at a rate of fifteen feet a year. That's serious for Syria, and it's even more serious for Iraq...you know what Mesopotamia means? It means land between two rivers. The Tigris and the Euphrates. They both originate in the mountains of Turkey. Without those two rivers Iraq would not, could not exist." They go on to discuss the Turkish Central Anatolian Project to construct 20 dams on the Euphrates and the Tigris by the year 2020. "Those dams will pull the plug on Iraq...the poor buggers will die of thirst. They don't have any other source of water" (p. 251-2).If you like reading that kind of candid dialogue, you'll love this book. I did, and it opened my eyes.