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One of the primary symptons of ‘dissociative fugue’ is a sudden form of disturbance, involving an unexpected journey away from the family home or workplace, with an inability to recall one’s past. This action may involve general confusion about one’s personal identity, or the adoption of a new one.

The length of a fugue may range from hours to weeks or months, and throughout this time, the individual may appear perfectly normal and nondescript. However, as a general self awareness develops, thoughts of amnesia and one’s former life may cause severe distress.

The prevalence of dissociative fugue has been estimated at 0.2%, which is extremely low, yet it offers one very compelling solution to the darkest of all Agatha Christie mysteries; namely what lay behind her extraordinary 11-day disappearance in 1926? Several plausible theories have competed for favour over the years, but Andrew Norman’s 2006 biography offers an explanation which satisfies every aspect of the case; namely that the novelist was in a fugue state, or, more technically, a psychogenic trance, a rare, deluded condition brought on by trauma or depression, which may also have led the writer and actor Stephen Fry to travel to Bruges in 1995 without leaving word with his friends or family.

Whatever one’s view, its been a mystery worthy of the joint best selling fiction writer of all time…..