Elephants Do Forget by Edmund Swettenham

Thanks to Paint by Numbers 

Title: Elephants Do Forget 

Author: Edmund Swettenham

Publisher: not known 

Source book: A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie (Miss Marple #5)

Edmund Swettenham, a cynical young writer who claims to be a Communist but lives with his very middle class mother in a nice country village, has been writing a depressing-sounding book. Apparently there are pages and pages about an unshaven man getting out of bed and what he smells like, and the grey streets, and a horrible old woman with dropsy [an old fashioned term for fluid retention which can cause heart failure] and a vicious young tart who dribbles down her chin - and they all talk interminably about the state of the world and wonder what they were alive for. 

It seems that Edmund gets as bored of his characters as I have just typing out this little description, and who can wonder?

Well, he gets bored and instead writes a ‘roaring’ farce in three acts and it’s called Elephants Do Forget.

What’s more his play is going to be produced, in London. Well done Edmund. Let’s hope it’s successful.

Obviously we haven’t forgotten that Agatha Christie later wrote a book called Elephants Can Remember, which features Hercule Poirot.

Miss Marple’s writer nephew, Raymond West, also features in A Murder is Announced, if only peripherally. Miss Marple tells us that he is so successful with his clever books, and he prides himself on never writing about anything pleasant. Hmmn. You can rest assured that I won’t be queuing up at any of his book signings. Well I wouldn’t if he wasn’t fictional. Pfff.

Thanks to Peter Delaney and African Wildlife Fine Art Prints