An Egypt travel experience to whet appetites for the much-delayed Death on the Nile remake

“When I read it now I feel myself back again on the steamer from Assuan to Wadi Halfa,” Agatha Christie wrote in a foreword to her novel Death on the Nile (1937). Christie was inspired by a holiday in Egypt, and observed that the resulting book “is one of the best of my ‘foreign travel’ ones … the reader can escape to sunny skies and blue water in the confines of an armchair”.

Kenneth Branagh’s upcoming film version of the murder mystery is likely to have viewers vicariously visiting Egypt, too. If they ever see the movie, that is; the release is becoming as wrapped in mystery as the story itself.

The first two delays – from October 2020 to January 2021, then September – were understandable, given the Covid-19 pandemic. The latest postponement, however, until February 2022, is perplexing. Recent allegations of sexual assault made against Armie Hammer, who plays secondary antagonist Simon Doyle in the movie, may have something to do with it, but Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures isn’t saying. 

What follows are reminiscences of a trip to Egypt’s Abu Simbel temples to whet your appetite for the movie or the return of travel to exotic locations – whichever comes first. The temples – dedicated to Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II and his wife, Nefertari – were so pivotal to the plot of Death on the Nile that an illustration of the complex, with a graceful steamer moored in front, featured on the dust jacket of the original British edition of the book.

Like Christie – and Doyle – I stayed in Aswan (formerly spelt Assuan) before travelling by boat to Abu Simbel. And like them I checked into the Old Cataract Hotel, which itself felt like stepping into an Agatha Christie novel.