Teresa Reviews David Suchet Around the World (2025)

Teresa reviews David Suchet Around the World (2025)

(c)2025 by Teresa Peschel

Is it entertaining? 3 Agathas

There’s a lot of lecturing going on along with the travelogue.

Is it educational? 2 Agathas

I wanted a lot more info about the Empire Exhibition itself and not on the evils of colonialism.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

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Every empire has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginnings of empires are filled with vigor, enthusiasm, and the urge to conquer new territories and rebuild them in their own image. The middle period of an empire reaches new heights of wealth, power, complacency, and the onset of decadence. When an empire ends, the citizens, especially back home, have gotten tired. Empires are expensive to run. They’re energy intensive in manpower and resources. Once docile territories begin openly fomenting for independence because the residents want to keep their natural resources and stop pouring them into the empire. It’s just past the empire’s peak that peoples out in the territories ask themselves that age-old question parodied by Monty Python in The Life of Brian (1979) when Reg asks, “What have the Romans ever done for us?”

At the end of an empire — and for generations afterwards — peoples out in the territories fume over the horrors the empire wreaked upon them because it’s now safe to do so. It’s certainly safer and easier than complaining about whoever’s currently in charge or fixing current problems!

What does this have to do with Agatha or David Suchet? When she was born in 1890, Queen Victoria was on the throne and the sun never set on the British Empire. World War I went a long, long way to ending the Empire. When plans began forming for the British Empire Exhibition in 1920, the exhausted citizens were already starting to wonder if anything mattered, especially after the slaughter of millions during the war. The British economy struggled. The territories stretching around the world were becoming restive. Other powers were challenging Great Britain for dominance.

An exhibition of the empire’s might and solidarity seemed just the ticket to raise spirits and encourage more trade. Thus, in 1921, Major Ernest Belcher, assistant general manager of the exhibition, asked Archie Christie to travel around the world with him to drum up enthusiasm from businesses and governments. And, by the way, would his wife Agatha like to come along?

Already a veteran traveler, Agatha enthusiastically agreed to 10 months away from home and their young daughter, living out of a suitcase in steamships, trains, and hotels. She was a promising young mystery writer and happy to see the world. This Grand Tour promised great fun, adventures in far-off lands, and the chance to serve the empire.

Major Belcher had a limited itinerary. Out of the empire’s nearly 60 countries and territories, he focused on four: South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. In addition, Agatha and Archie could take a month off in Hawaii, then a territory of the U.S.

They went everywhere, talked to everyone, and enjoyed hair-raising adventures in South Africa as a general strike turned into a young revolution and martial law was declared. Once they made it to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), the trip got calmer and stayed that way. Agatha thoroughly documented the trip with diary entries, letters home, and photographs. In 2012, her grandson Mathew Pritchard compiled this wealth of material, along with pertinent excerpts of her autobiography (1977) into The Grand Tour: Letters and Photographs from the British Empire Expedition.

If you want to learn more about her grand tour, read the book. This documentary is okay, but you won’t learn nearly as much about what she and Archie did or where they went and thought as you will from reading her letters and perusing her photos.

What you’ll get from the documentary, all five parts, is Sir David Suchet having a great time visiting some, but not nearly all, the places she went. He’ll remind you frequently that he played Hercule Poirot for 25 years and what Agatha meant to him.

Each of the five territories Agatha visited merits one episode of the documentary. You’ll get a tour, rather like a paid advertisement, of the stunningly posh hotels, wineries, museums, cultural landmarks, and scenic beauties. You’ll also meet indigenous people from each area happy to lecture Sir David about the evils of the British Empire and how damaging it was to them and their culture.

Which I’m sure it was! We forget in our modern, enlightened times that conquerors since the dawn of time don’t give a damn about the people they subjugate and the British Empire was no exception. Why should they care? They were conquerors.

Unfortunately, those conversations felt like padding. This was particularly apparent in Hawaii. I was stationed there in the late ’80s, so I am somewhat familiar with the state. Although you wouldn’t know it from Sir David’s conversations, Princess Keleanohoana’api’api was surfing back in the 17th century and, in the vintage film footage, you’ll see women surfing. Similarly, you won’t learn the cultural renaissance of traditional hula began in the ’60s. Agatha would have fit right in surfing although any dancing she’d have seen wouldn’t have been traditional hula.

Even so, it was nice to see Oahu again. The production company filmed very carefully, so you don’t see how modernized the island is compared to what Agatha saw. They somehow managed to completely avoid Diamondhead. Hawaii looks as green and undeveloped as it must have been when she was there. You also won’t learn that while the regrown tropical forest Sir David visits is wonderful for the ecosystem, the cacao (Theobroma cacao) they’re growing is not native to Hawaii. It’s native to the Amazon. But you’ve got to make money somehow and Lonohana Estate Chocolate needs the advertising.

I wish they’d spent more time really exploring where she went instead of swift drive-by tours, although I was surprised to learn HRH Prince Edward was immortalized at the Canadian exhibit in a life-sized statue made of butter.

Equally surprising from her letters and only touched upon in the documentary was that Agatha was running out of money and had to scrape by. Archie got the stipend for meals. She did not.

The ending was a letdown, too. Sir David returns to Greenway and ruminates over what Agatha thought of her Grand Tour years later, after her 11-day disappearance, the worldwide firestorm, and Archie divorcing her to marry Major Belcher’s secretary. Did those experiences color her happy memories? What he does not mention is that in 1930, she met and soon married Max Mallowan. She and Max bought Greenway in 1938 and spent happy decades together.

I’ll paraphrase what historian and Professor Deborah Sugg Ryan had to say about British Empire Exhibition-goers in 1924: While the exhibition may have had worthy intentions about education and trade and imperial propaganda, its visitors only really wanted to be entertained. They don’t want to be lectured. I felt the same way about this documentary.