Agatha Christie

Title: Agatha Christie: A very elusive woman Author:  Lucy Worsley
Reviewer: Beverley Roos-Muller
In a murder-mystery class literally all of her own is the late Dame Agatha Christie, whose clever, plot-twisting books turned her into the world’s best-selling author of all time, with 66 novels inspiring many famous movies such as Death on the Nile, Murder on the Orient Express and my personal favourite, the slightly naughty Murder under the Sun with Maggie Smith as the ex-mistress of a Balkan king and the late, great Peter Ustinov playing her most famous character, Hercule Poiret, the clever, plump Belgian detective.

She wrote successful plays too, The Mousetrap being the longest-running ever on the West End in London.
            When I think of Agatha Christie, I picture a slightly frumpy old lady in pearls. Yet she was considered a tall, slender beauty in her day, born to a wealthy English family in England in 1890; she was full of fun and energy, and above all, hard-working talent, usually turning out at least a book a year.
            She was, in reality, an extraordinary pioneer in the world of women writing, a role she liked to downplay. It’s only when we look back on her string of famous successes that we realise just what a considerable talent she was, slightly scorned by the literatti but it’s her books that are still selling. I’ve just reread a couple, and was fascinated by her insight into characters and motives. She understood human nature, and hid her brilliance well.
            Her first husband Archie Christie was rather gorgeous; he was also feckless. They had one daughter, Rosalind, but Agatha did not take to mothering (though her later relationship with her grandson was deeply affectionate). Soon after the birth, she and her husband took off without their daughter for a ten-month cruise connected to his work, during which time she surfed at Muizenberg (a sport she enjoyed) and secretly surveyed the passengers on board – she loved using material she overheard for her next novels. One of her favourite anecdotes was overhearing passengers talking about her: “I hear she drinks like a fish!” said one, not realising that the author was sitting close by.
            When the marriage crashed, she famously disappeared for ten days – it made international headlines. Much nonsense has been written about this gap in her life – the skillful author Lucy Worsley has briskly set out what really happened, and why.
            Her later marriage to the archaeologist Max Mallowan (later Sir Max), fourteen years younger than her, was successful, loving and passionate. She enjoyed (and financed) many of his expeditions to the Middle East while picking up much material for her incredibly popular novels. After her death, a love letter from him was found folded into her purse – she had carried it for 39 years.
            Lucy Worsely’s biography is delightful, the best I’ve read of the extraordinary Agatha Christie, whose work is still giving a huge number of people a huge amount of pleasure - they are well worth revisiting, or discovering for the first time.