(Untitled)

[flemmings]

As always when reading Christie, I'm confounded by her definitions of 'old and moribund' as well as 'so long ago no one can remember.' Doddering oldsters of 65, and eighteen years being 'time that the memory of man runneth not.' This undoddering septuagenarian retains a perfectly clear memory of 2006 and rather wishes she didn't. I might cut some

Comments

[heleninwales]

Perhaps Christie was still young when she wrote about doddering oldsters of 65? Admittedly some were struggling at that age, but my maternal grandparents were spry and active right through their 70s.

I don't think I'd call books set in the 70s "historical fiction", though it's certainly becoming period fiction.

[flemmings]

The doddering oldsters may have been from earlier works but the eighteen years was sooo long ago is from a late Miss Marple. OTOH the definition of old may have been of the time. My father was incandescent with rage at hearing a TV news show, in the early 80s, talk about a hospital patient as 'this poor old man of sixty-four.' He was 70 at the time and still working.