Seven Dials

Seven Dials may refer to:

Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English crime novelist, short story writer and playwright. She also wrote six romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best known for the 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections that she wrote under her own name, most of which revolve around the investigative work of such characters as Hercule Poirot, Jane Marple, Parker Pyne, Harley Quin/Mr Satterthwaite and Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. She wrote the world's longest-running play, a murder mystery, The Mousetrap. In 1971 she was made a Dame for her contribution to literature.

Christie was born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon. She served in a hospital during the First World War before marrying and starting a family in London. She was initially unsuccessful at getting her work published, but in 1920 The Bodley Head press published her novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring the character of Hercule Poirot. This launched her literary career.

The Seven Dials Mystery

The Seven Dials Mystery is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by William Collins & Sons on 24 January 1929 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. In it, Christie brings back the characters from an earlier novel, The Secret of Chimneys: Lady Eileen (Bundle) Brent, Lord Caterham, Bill Eversleigh, George Lomax, Tredwell, and Superintendent Battle. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00.

Plot summary

A house party is taking place at Chimneys,a manor house, which has been rented out by the Marquess of Caterham to Sir Oswald Coote, a self-made millionaire. In addition to Sir Oswald and Lady Coote, there is a party of young people staying, three girls and five young men, namely Gerald "Gerry" Wade, Jimmy Thesiger, Ronny Deverux, Bill Eversleigh and Rupert "Pongo" Bateman, Sir Oswald's secretary. Gerry Wade, has a bad habit of sleeping very late into the morning and the other young people plan a joke on Gerald by buying eight alarm clocks, putting them in his room and timing them to go off at intervals the next morning.

Seven Dials, London

Seven Dials is a small road junction in Covent Garden in the West End of London where seven streets converge. At the centre of the roughly circular space is a pillar bearing six sundials, a result of the pillar being commissioned before a late stage alteration of the plans from an original six roads.

The term also refers informally to the immediate surrounding area.

History

The landed estate formally belonged to the Worshipful Company of Mercers which allowed building licences on what was open farmland to maximise their income in what was the burgeoning West End of the developing metropolitan area. The original layout of the Seven Dials area was designed by Thomas Neale in the early 1690s. The original plan had six roads converging, although this was later increased to seven. The sundial pillar was built with only six faces, with the dial itself acting as the seventh. This number of roads was chosen in order to maximise the number of houses that could be built on the site.

Saint Giles

Saint Giles (English pronunciation: /dʒaɪlz/, gaɪlz; Latin: Aegidius; French: Gilles; c. 650 AD – c. 710), also known as Giles the Hermit, was a GreekChristian hermit saint from Athens, whose legend is centered in Provence and Septimania. The tomb in the abbey Giles was said to have founded, in Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, became a place of pilgrimage and a stop on the road that led from Arles to Santiago de Compostela, the pilgrim Way of St. James. He is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers.

Life

Giles first lived in retreats near the mouth of the Rhône and by the River Gard, in Septimania, today's southern France. The story that he was the son of King Theodore and Queen Pelagia of Athens is probably an embellishment of his early hagiographers; it was given wide currency in the Legenda Aurea (Golden Legend). The two main incidents in his life were often depicted in art.

His early history, as given in the Legenda Aurea, links him with Arles, but finally he withdrew deep into the forest near Nîmes, where in the greatest solitude he spent many years, his sole companion being a deer, or red deer, who in some stories sustained him on her milk. Giles ate a vegetarian diet. This retreat was finally discovered by the king's hunters, who had pursued the hind to its place of refuge. An arrow shot at the deer wounded the saint instead, who afterwards became a patron of cripples. The king, who by legend was Wamba, an anachronistic Visigoth, but who must have been (at least in the original story) a Frank due to the historical setting, conceived a high esteem for the hermit, whose humility rejected all honors save some disciples, and built him a monastery in his valley, Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, which Giles placed under the Benedictine rule. Here he died in the early part of the 8th century, with the highest repute for sanctity and miracles.