Hi, I’m Alex – The guy who created The Poison Game for this exhibition. I decided to do a small game on poison as my theme was inspired by the book ‘A is for Arsenic’ which talks about every poison Agatha Christie used in her novels with real life examples given too.

I had decided to use this topic as I have always been pulled towards forensics and, at the moment, it is what I want to do later in life. And also because toxicology is a field that I find fascinating.

By reading the book I have learned a lot about the different poisons used and the history also behind the poisons, and how they will act on the body, lethal doses and the symptoms of the victim before and after dying.

My reading of ‘A is for Arsenic’ has had a huge impact on my idea as I  first read the book then came up with the idea of creating this game. At first I was going to do a game that would have been a bit like Cluedo but with the use of poisons instead of the normal weapons used in the game, but I could see that no real learning of chemistry nor knowledge of chemistry would have been needed to play the game. So I decided to do my own game and only take inspiration from Cluedo.

The book gave me numerous ideas for this game as the reader is given different examples on how the poison was used by Agatha Christie in the stories, but also some real examples that happened in the history of human kind and how the people that did use it, managed to beat the judiciary system or how they would receive a sentence because a new procedure was developed to examine what poison killed the victim.

Each of the advice given for each room of the game has been taken from the real-life use of the poison, whether it was used intentionally or unintentionally.