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Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman
A new, fascinating account of the life of Agatha Christie from celebrated literary and cultural historian Lucy Worsley.
"Nobody in the world was more inadequate to act the heroine than I was."
Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was “just” an ordinary housewife, when clearly she wasn’t? Her life is fascinating for its mysteries and its passions and, as Lucy Worsley says, "She was thrillingly, scintillatingly modern." She went surfing in Hawaii, she loved fast cars, and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology, which helped her through devastating mental illness.
So why—despite all the evidence to the contrary—did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure?
She was born in 1890 into a world that had its own rules about what women could and couldn’t do. Lucy Worsley’s biography is not just of a massively, internationally successful writer. It's also the story of a person who, despite the obstacles of class and gender, became an astonishingly successful working woman.
With access to personal letters and papers that have rarely been seen, Lucy Worsley’s biography is both authoritative and entertaining and makes us realize what an extraordinary pioneer Agatha Christie was—truly a woman who wrote the twentieth century.
"Nobody in the world was more inadequate to act the heroine than I was."
Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was “just” an ordinary housewife, when clearly she wasn’t? Her life is fascinating for its mysteries and its passions and, as Lucy Worsley says, "She was thrillingly, scintillatingly modern." She went surfing in Hawaii, she loved fast cars, and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology, which helped her through devastating mental illness.
So why—despite all the evidence to the contrary—did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure?
She was born in 1890 into a world that had its own rules about what women could and couldn’t do. Lucy Worsley’s biography is not just of a massively, internationally successful writer. It's also the story of a person who, despite the obstacles of class and gender, became an astonishingly successful working woman.
With access to personal letters and papers that have rarely been seen, Lucy Worsley’s biography is both authoritative and entertaining and makes us realize what an extraordinary pioneer Agatha Christie was—truly a woman who wrote the twentieth century.
498 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 8, 2022
About the author
Lucy Worsley
26 books2,730 followersI was born in Reading (not great, but it could have been Slough), studied Ancient and Modern History at New College, Oxford, and I've got a PhD in art history from the University of Sussex.
My first job after leaving college was at a crazy but wonderful historic house called Milton Manor in Oxfordshire. Here I would give guided tours, occasionally feed the llamas, and look for important pieces of paper that my boss Anthony had lost. Soon after that I moved to the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, in the lovely job for administrator of the Wind and Watermills Section. Here I helped to organise that celebrated media extravaganza, National Mills Day. I departed for English Heritage in 1997, first as an Assistant Inspector and then as an Inspector of Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings; Bolsover Castle, Hardwick Old Hall, and Kirby Hall were my favourite properties there. In 2002 I made a brief excursion to Glasgow Museums before coming down to London as Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces in 2003. Yes, this is a brilliant job, but no, you can’t have it. (Bribes have been offered, and refused.)
You might also catch me presenting history films on the old goggle box, giving the talks on the cruise ship Queen Mary 2, or slurping cocktails.
***
Lucy Worsley, OBE (born 18 December 1973) is an English historian, author, curator, and television presenter.
Worsley is Joint Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces but is best known as a presenter of BBC Television series on historical topics, including Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency (2011), Harlots, Housewives and Heroines: A 17th Century History for Girls (2012), The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain (2014), A Very British Romance (2015), Lucy Worsley: Mozart’s London Odyssey (2016), and Six Wives with Lucy Worsley (2016).
-From Wikipedia
My first job after leaving college was at a crazy but wonderful historic house called Milton Manor in Oxfordshire. Here I would give guided tours, occasionally feed the llamas, and look for important pieces of paper that my boss Anthony had lost. Soon after that I moved to the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, in the lovely job for administrator of the Wind and Watermills Section. Here I helped to organise that celebrated media extravaganza, National Mills Day. I departed for English Heritage in 1997, first as an Assistant Inspector and then as an Inspector of Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings; Bolsover Castle, Hardwick Old Hall, and Kirby Hall were my favourite properties there. In 2002 I made a brief excursion to Glasgow Museums before coming down to London as Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces in 2003. Yes, this is a brilliant job, but no, you can’t have it. (Bribes have been offered, and refused.)
You might also catch me presenting history films on the old goggle box, giving the talks on the cruise ship Queen Mary 2, or slurping cocktails.
***
Lucy Worsley, OBE (born 18 December 1973) is an English historian, author, curator, and television presenter.
Worsley is Joint Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces but is best known as a presenter of BBC Television series on historical topics, including Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency (2011), Harlots, Housewives and Heroines: A 17th Century History for Girls (2012), The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain (2014), A Very British Romance (2015), Lucy Worsley: Mozart’s London Odyssey (2016), and Six Wives with Lucy Worsley (2016).
-From Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,072 reviews
November 23, 2022
Having read a couple of Agatha Christie novels, I was intrigued enough to buy a Copy of Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Womanand tbh it really didn't float my boat. I felt like I needed to be a fan of Christie in order to get something from this book. The author references a lot of characters and plot lines from Christie’s novels which if you haven't read a great deal of her work may make for tedious reading. Perhaps a reader who is more familiar with her work may well get more from this book than me.
Having said that, I was interested in the author's life and her family and the book does give a good account of her life.
I think this would made a good read if you are better acquainted with her work than I was.
An ok read for me just not one for my favourites shelf.
Having said that, I was interested in the author's life and her family and the book does give a good account of her life.
I think this would made a good read if you are better acquainted with her work than I was.
An ok read for me just not one for my favourites shelf.
September 15, 2022
This feels like a stop-start narrative - it races along in jolly Lucy fashion until it gets bogged down in describing a house or a Christie relative, and then pulls itself out and goes bounding off again. It's full of Worsleyisms in an attempt to make Christie modern: 'many people... fail to realise what a total man-magnet she was in her youth', or, on Archie Christie, Agatha's first and unfaithful husband: 'He was incredibly hot'. It all feels a bit try-hard as if trying to separate this from more sober biographies or assessments of Christie.
To be fair, however much Worsley is on side with Christie, she doesn't shy away from recording her racial clichés and unrepentant anti-Semitism. She does, though, try to remake Christie as a modern independent woman, however much Christie was herself pretty reactionary, with little sympathy for suffragette/feminist positions.
This is full of open spoilers from Christie's books so if you haven't read them yet, you might want to avoid this. I'd say that if you've read any other biography of Christie such as Laura Thompson's Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life, you won't learn anything new. Worsley pays a lot of attention to the missing eleven days but doesn't ultimately come up with anything different.
By the end of the book, Christie still seems to escape understanding: she's described as shy and a 'man-magnet', she's confident and retiring, she escapes through writing and she writes because she needs the money - of course, people are multiple and not easily pigeon-holed but by the end of this book I still didn't feel I really had a handle on Christie as either writer or woman - elusive, indeed.
To be fair, however much Worsley is on side with Christie, she doesn't shy away from recording her racial clichés and unrepentant anti-Semitism. She does, though, try to remake Christie as a modern independent woman, however much Christie was herself pretty reactionary, with little sympathy for suffragette/feminist positions.
This is full of open spoilers from Christie's books so if you haven't read them yet, you might want to avoid this. I'd say that if you've read any other biography of Christie such as Laura Thompson's Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life, you won't learn anything new. Worsley pays a lot of attention to the missing eleven days but doesn't ultimately come up with anything different.
By the end of the book, Christie still seems to escape understanding: she's described as shy and a 'man-magnet', she's confident and retiring, she escapes through writing and she writes because she needs the money - of course, people are multiple and not easily pigeon-holed but by the end of this book I still didn't feel I really had a handle on Christie as either writer or woman - elusive, indeed.
April 30, 2023
So many things made this biography fascinating to me. I'm currently engaged in a project to read Christie's novels in publication order, one per month. I look forward to each one and enjoy watching the changes in English society as time rolls on. I have also read Christie's autobiography and wondered what she omitted and what she massaged to make it look better.
I think many women can relate to the desire to be seen as attractive and/or feminine. This desire seems to me to be manifested in Ms. Christie as disavowing her ambition and claiming not to be too serious about being an author. Her behaviour tells a different story, as she had very definite ideas about her novels, even down to the blurbs on the covers. Her publishers found her a formidable client, so there was definitely ambition there even if she wouldn't admit to it. I wonder if she was conscious of the dichotomy between words and actions?
I think her reluctance to claim her rightful recognition has contributed to her relegation by the literature snobs to ‘merely' genre fiction. I am constantly amazed by how deftly she introduces her characters, how amusing her dialogue is, and how well structured her plots are. She accomplished so much in so few pages. Considering her haphazard education, her work is even more amazing. She had a huge role in shaping the mystery genre, pioneering devices like the unreliable narrator and psychological profiling.
Like so many writers, Christie was an introvert. She didn't seek publicity and in fact often fled from it. Many members of the public seemed to resent her unwillingness to open herself to them, thereby proving her point, that her audience expected too much. She was willing to pretend that she was a regular citizen, not a celebrated author, a ridiculous proposition. It seems that male critics, directors, and reviewers were particularly hostile—how dare a mere woman be so successful and yet demand a private life?
I had read that her final novels revealed the possibility of dementia and this author repeats the reasons for this speculation. It seems reasonable, if sad. However I cannot feel sorry for her. She had a long and eventful life, filled with more happiness than tribulation, and died quickly and quietly. A life well lived and a wonderful literary legacy.
I think many women can relate to the desire to be seen as attractive and/or feminine. This desire seems to me to be manifested in Ms. Christie as disavowing her ambition and claiming not to be too serious about being an author. Her behaviour tells a different story, as she had very definite ideas about her novels, even down to the blurbs on the covers. Her publishers found her a formidable client, so there was definitely ambition there even if she wouldn't admit to it. I wonder if she was conscious of the dichotomy between words and actions?
I think her reluctance to claim her rightful recognition has contributed to her relegation by the literature snobs to ‘merely' genre fiction. I am constantly amazed by how deftly she introduces her characters, how amusing her dialogue is, and how well structured her plots are. She accomplished so much in so few pages. Considering her haphazard education, her work is even more amazing. She had a huge role in shaping the mystery genre, pioneering devices like the unreliable narrator and psychological profiling.
Like so many writers, Christie was an introvert. She didn't seek publicity and in fact often fled from it. Many members of the public seemed to resent her unwillingness to open herself to them, thereby proving her point, that her audience expected too much. She was willing to pretend that she was a regular citizen, not a celebrated author, a ridiculous proposition. It seems that male critics, directors, and reviewers were particularly hostile—how dare a mere woman be so successful and yet demand a private life?
I had read that her final novels revealed the possibility of dementia and this author repeats the reasons for this speculation. It seems reasonable, if sad. However I cannot feel sorry for her. She had a long and eventful life, filled with more happiness than tribulation, and died quickly and quietly. A life well lived and a wonderful literary legacy.
October 22, 2022
I finished this in Zermatt, Switzerland. I loved listening to this highly entertaining account of Christie from Lucy Worsley on the train rides through the Alps. It might not be the definitive biography of Chirstie but it was highly interesting.
May 30, 2024
I have only read one Agatha Christie book. I was drawn to this book because I am fascinated by Lucy Worsley. Her narration was enjoyable. It took me a few library checkouts to get this book done, but it was worth the effort. Christie led an interesting and fulfilling life.
January 30, 2023
I am one of those book persons who becomes star struck by authors. I’ve met some at book festivals and events and seriously I am so in awe, I get totally tongue tied. I’d always rather read about an author versus a movie star (or Harry!). I have loved Agatha Christie since I was a teenager. I devoured her books in those days and then moved on for quite a while. Having gone to her home in Devon a few years ago, my interest has been rekindled.
I listened to this book. It was narrated by the author, Lucy Worsley and if you know of Lucy Worsley, you know she is a wonderful, dramatic speaker.
It was great learning more about Agatha. In recent years, she has become the subject of a number of books, all based on her 11 day disappearance in 1926. Well, there is a lot more to that woman than that and the author has done a thorough research, having access to Christie’s archives.
If you are interested in learning more about her, then this book is an excellent resource and the audiobook is exceptional.
Published: 2022
I listened to this book. It was narrated by the author, Lucy Worsley and if you know of Lucy Worsley, you know she is a wonderful, dramatic speaker.
It was great learning more about Agatha. In recent years, she has become the subject of a number of books, all based on her 11 day disappearance in 1926. Well, there is a lot more to that woman than that and the author has done a thorough research, having access to Christie’s archives.
If you are interested in learning more about her, then this book is an excellent resource and the audiobook is exceptional.
Published: 2022
July 15, 2023
This is how you write a biography! You can treat your "subject" with respect without whitewashing their actions/traits or "sterilising" them to boring non-humans.
Lucy Worsley has done full justice to Agatha Christie, her life and her work. Loved that she presented AC and her times in 3D and did not pussyfoot around possible sensitive subjects (like Christie's appatent antisemitism in her novels even after WWII, her attitude to motherhood, or the weak quality of her later books).
Working on full review.
Lucy Worsley has done full justice to Agatha Christie, her life and her work. Loved that she presented AC and her times in 3D and did not pussyfoot around possible sensitive subjects (like Christie's appatent antisemitism in her novels even after WWII, her attitude to motherhood, or the weak quality of her later books).
Working on full review.
September 25, 2022
I will preface this review by stating I have not read other Agatha Christie biographies, nor have much prior knowledge about her as a person other than the sensational 1926 much talked about disappearance. If you are of the same knowledge level as I, this ought to be an enjoyable read. Lucy Worsley encompasses all of Dame Agatha Christie's 85 years of life and the afterwards in regards to her estate. Her source listing at the back of the book supports that Worsley deeply researched her subject. What I appreciated in reading this book is the fact that Worsley's writing is rather conversational. Much like her BBC specials, she takes a casual tone in educating her audience with interjecting perspectives on her subject that the modern readers find relatable whilst learning. I've also given it a high rating due to the fact that I was astonished that I couldn't put a biography down. I eagerly was counting down the hours until I could pick it up again. I will also add that Lucy warns us and I'll second her warning for readers: There are numerous Agatha Christie book plot spoilers throughout the pages in her book . Be warned if you'd rather not have any revelations made prior to reading her books. I've got a spotty memory so odds are, I'll have forgotten what the spoilers Worsley reveals are by the time I get to reading all the Christie novels.
Agatha Christie's life was incredible when one reads it all put down on paper. Born in 1890, she spent her early childhood in a luxurious late Victorian household and her transformative adolescence in the Edwardian age. She saw both World Wars and the ensuing social, economic, and psychologic aftermath for the British people and West Asia (during her travels there). Still writing during the 1950's-1970's, her writing showed hints of evolving with the times and also steadfastly not evolving in terms of racial and social terminology used. Worsley pads through this deferentially with interspersing displeasure and explanations for this. However, the breadth of what Agatha Christie experienced in a lifetime was astonishing to me to see it all displayed. I found this book to be an incredibly well written piece that gave me a terrific introductory education on Agatha Christie. I found her endearing, slightly problematic at moments, fascinating, relatable, and ultimately maintaining a bit of mystery still. Which I suppose, after reading my impressions of her, I'd hope to be described similarly after death. She was after all human; just subject to far more scrutiny in her lifetime than I will ever be.
Bits of the book I jotted down that spoke to me:
Agatha's described "Plutocratic Period" : After the dramatic aftermath of the 1926 disappearance and her subsequent divorce. Her ex- husband rapidly remarries the woman he was seeing. Agatha embarks on a journey to see Ur and travels on the Orient Express . In her autobiography, she explains it as a tale of reinvention. Which I loved to read, as prior to this, there are hints at her suicidal ideations due to the death of her mother and husband's infidelity. Agatha is finding inspiration again. She writes "I was going by myself . I should find out what of person I was." . That stopped me in my tracks. It was so relatable to me as a woman. Throughout life, we tend to lose ourselves for varying reasons and have to go find the person we were. She later muses that she was a "good weight" between 1926-1928. Throughout her life, Agatha would be emancipated from worrying about her weight or fretting about it... again deeply relatable to me. She frets about her weight to her fiancee Max during their courtship, "Perhaps I am (little Piglet!) your favourite size!! Do say I am!" He responds (so so perfectly) "Darling, you not only are my favourite size but always will be, expanding or contracting" I immediately thought, Agatha- stop your dithering, how can you not marry this man?!
Her thoughts on travel: "Your travel life has the essence of a dream... you are yourself but a different self" . I haven't read it put like that before and found it to be quite right.
As a lover of the Middlebrow genre, I thoroughly enjoyed Worsley and Christie's references to it! Christie was referred to as a middlebrow author. In terms of her own thoughts on the Battle of the Brows, referencing her second husband Max a writer and archeologist, "I am a lowbrow and he is a highbrow, yet we complement each other." Worsley points out that during the timeframe coinciding with sales of Christie's novels in which she wrote about people's homes and their meanings with a "peculiarly homely brand of death", the magazines Good Housekeeping and Woman and Home were launched targeting the new middle class female reader focused on her home. Her "murders of quiet, domestic interest" employing domestic objects found in the home, appealed to her readership. Agatha would show us her adeptness at reinvention through time and experience.
Agatha Christie writing under the pseudonym "Mary Westmacott" was new to me. (I warned you in the beginning I'm not extremely well versed in Agatha Christie). She took distinct pleasure in writing anonymously under this pen name and was intensely grieved when she lost that anonymity. Worsley writes that the main reason people read Westmacott is see what reveals about the life and opinions of Agatha Christie. Which I found to be in the similar thread to others opinions devaluing middlebrow fiction. I say this due to their being classified as such "The Westmacotts are definitely uneven in quality, but their reception was also damaged by their female authorship and subject matter: 'somewhat juvenile romantic novels' was one conclusion by a male critic. Yet they'll always have supporters, especially among people who aren't ashamed to enjoy middlebrow mid-century writers like Monica Dickens or Dorothy Whipple". Needless to say, I'll be picking up a Westmacott or two for myself.
All in all, this was an utterly enjoyable read for me. One I will be reflecting on for some time to come.
Agatha Christie's life was incredible when one reads it all put down on paper. Born in 1890, she spent her early childhood in a luxurious late Victorian household and her transformative adolescence in the Edwardian age. She saw both World Wars and the ensuing social, economic, and psychologic aftermath for the British people and West Asia (during her travels there). Still writing during the 1950's-1970's, her writing showed hints of evolving with the times and also steadfastly not evolving in terms of racial and social terminology used. Worsley pads through this deferentially with interspersing displeasure and explanations for this. However, the breadth of what Agatha Christie experienced in a lifetime was astonishing to me to see it all displayed. I found this book to be an incredibly well written piece that gave me a terrific introductory education on Agatha Christie. I found her endearing, slightly problematic at moments, fascinating, relatable, and ultimately maintaining a bit of mystery still. Which I suppose, after reading my impressions of her, I'd hope to be described similarly after death. She was after all human; just subject to far more scrutiny in her lifetime than I will ever be.
Bits of the book I jotted down that spoke to me:
Agatha's described "Plutocratic Period" : After the dramatic aftermath of the 1926 disappearance and her subsequent divorce. Her ex- husband rapidly remarries the woman he was seeing. Agatha embarks on a journey to see Ur and travels on the Orient Express . In her autobiography, she explains it as a tale of reinvention. Which I loved to read, as prior to this, there are hints at her suicidal ideations due to the death of her mother and husband's infidelity. Agatha is finding inspiration again. She writes "I was going by myself . I should find out what of person I was." . That stopped me in my tracks. It was so relatable to me as a woman. Throughout life, we tend to lose ourselves for varying reasons and have to go find the person we were. She later muses that she was a "good weight" between 1926-1928. Throughout her life, Agatha would be emancipated from worrying about her weight or fretting about it... again deeply relatable to me. She frets about her weight to her fiancee Max during their courtship, "Perhaps I am (little Piglet!) your favourite size!! Do say I am!" He responds (so so perfectly) "Darling, you not only are my favourite size but always will be, expanding or contracting" I immediately thought, Agatha- stop your dithering, how can you not marry this man?!
Her thoughts on travel: "Your travel life has the essence of a dream... you are yourself but a different self" . I haven't read it put like that before and found it to be quite right.
As a lover of the Middlebrow genre, I thoroughly enjoyed Worsley and Christie's references to it! Christie was referred to as a middlebrow author. In terms of her own thoughts on the Battle of the Brows, referencing her second husband Max a writer and archeologist, "I am a lowbrow and he is a highbrow, yet we complement each other." Worsley points out that during the timeframe coinciding with sales of Christie's novels in which she wrote about people's homes and their meanings with a "peculiarly homely brand of death", the magazines Good Housekeeping and Woman and Home were launched targeting the new middle class female reader focused on her home. Her "murders of quiet, domestic interest" employing domestic objects found in the home, appealed to her readership. Agatha would show us her adeptness at reinvention through time and experience.
Agatha Christie writing under the pseudonym "Mary Westmacott" was new to me. (I warned you in the beginning I'm not extremely well versed in Agatha Christie). She took distinct pleasure in writing anonymously under this pen name and was intensely grieved when she lost that anonymity. Worsley writes that the main reason people read Westmacott is see what reveals about the life and opinions of Agatha Christie. Which I found to be in the similar thread to others opinions devaluing middlebrow fiction. I say this due to their being classified as such "The Westmacotts are definitely uneven in quality, but their reception was also damaged by their female authorship and subject matter: 'somewhat juvenile romantic novels' was one conclusion by a male critic. Yet they'll always have supporters, especially among people who aren't ashamed to enjoy middlebrow mid-century writers like Monica Dickens or Dorothy Whipple". Needless to say, I'll be picking up a Westmacott or two for myself.
All in all, this was an utterly enjoyable read for me. One I will be reflecting on for some time to come.
November 17, 2023
Agatha Christie is amongst my favourite authors of all time, so a book dedicated to her life was always going to appeal.
The stat that only Shakespeare and the Bible have sold more than the Queen of Crime just shows her enduring appeal.
Especially as the first Poirot book celebrated its 100th anniversary recently.
This autobiography goes into great details of Christie's life, starting from childhood.
One nice aspect is that each section is broken into decades, which gives a real sense of the way of the world that Christie inhabited.
I'd say this book was aimed towards Christie fans as many of her novels are referenced (spoilers!), though it's nice to see where she got her inspiration from.
Worsley takes great care in getting the reader to understand and appreciate Christie's life - especially the rocky parts.
The dissaperance in 1926 is practically well written.
The stat that only Shakespeare and the Bible have sold more than the Queen of Crime just shows her enduring appeal.
Especially as the first Poirot book celebrated its 100th anniversary recently.
This autobiography goes into great details of Christie's life, starting from childhood.
One nice aspect is that each section is broken into decades, which gives a real sense of the way of the world that Christie inhabited.
I'd say this book was aimed towards Christie fans as many of her novels are referenced (spoilers!), though it's nice to see where she got her inspiration from.
Worsley takes great care in getting the reader to understand and appreciate Christie's life - especially the rocky parts.
The dissaperance in 1926 is practically well written.
September 22, 2022
Just a few days ago, it was the anniversary of one of the most bestselling authors of all time, Dame Agatha Christie, birthday in 1890.
It’s a perfect time to plug this new release from one of my all time favorites, Dr. @lucy_worsley, a historian, documentarian + presenter, and Joint Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces in the UK (coolest jobs ever). I’ve been eagerly awaiting this one.
This brand new release is “Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman.” It is a fresh take on the biography of one of the most influential authors of all time. Christie was a prolific writer, having completed around 70 novels and around a dozen short story collections among others. Her works have sold over 2 billion copies and her iconic detective characters have lasted the test of time.
Now, this book looks at *the* Agatha. Worsley aims to uncover the woman behind the artist. She has accessed letters and papers rarely before uncovered and analyzed them with one central question in mind: what was the real Agatha Christie like?
In this book, Worsley covers topics such as:
🌸 AC’s childhood in the Victorian 1890s and her family
🌸 AC’s debutante years in the Edwardian 1900s and her marriage in 1914
🌸 AC’s work during WWI and WWII
🌸 Her disappearance and reappearance
🌸 Her literary work and reception, influences and those influenced
🌸 AC’s personal qualities, mental health
🌸 Her marriages, divorce, and child (Rosalind)
🌸 Her death, estate, and legacy
Among much more. Christie lived for 85 years and her stories last on. Her characters, especially Miss Marple and Poirot, live alongside iconic detective fiction figures like Poe’s Dupin and ACD’s Sherlock Holmes.
The chapters have short thematic sections, allowing for quick progress through the biography. Worsley is a talented, accessible and relatable writer, so all levels of interest and prior knowledge can be accommodated. Includes several pages of beautiful photographs.
Highly recommended. Out now from @pegasus_books! ❤️
It’s a perfect time to plug this new release from one of my all time favorites, Dr. @lucy_worsley, a historian, documentarian + presenter, and Joint Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces in the UK (coolest jobs ever). I’ve been eagerly awaiting this one.
This brand new release is “Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman.” It is a fresh take on the biography of one of the most influential authors of all time. Christie was a prolific writer, having completed around 70 novels and around a dozen short story collections among others. Her works have sold over 2 billion copies and her iconic detective characters have lasted the test of time.
Now, this book looks at *the* Agatha. Worsley aims to uncover the woman behind the artist. She has accessed letters and papers rarely before uncovered and analyzed them with one central question in mind: what was the real Agatha Christie like?
In this book, Worsley covers topics such as:
🌸 AC’s childhood in the Victorian 1890s and her family
🌸 AC’s debutante years in the Edwardian 1900s and her marriage in 1914
🌸 AC’s work during WWI and WWII
🌸 Her disappearance and reappearance
🌸 Her literary work and reception, influences and those influenced
🌸 AC’s personal qualities, mental health
🌸 Her marriages, divorce, and child (Rosalind)
🌸 Her death, estate, and legacy
Among much more. Christie lived for 85 years and her stories last on. Her characters, especially Miss Marple and Poirot, live alongside iconic detective fiction figures like Poe’s Dupin and ACD’s Sherlock Holmes.
The chapters have short thematic sections, allowing for quick progress through the biography. Worsley is a talented, accessible and relatable writer, so all levels of interest and prior knowledge can be accommodated. Includes several pages of beautiful photographs.
Highly recommended. Out now from @pegasus_books! ❤️
November 13, 2022
Lucy Worsley delves into the life of the Queen of Crime in an informative & enjoyable biogrpahy. Worsley's style of writing makes this a fine read & although there's nothing groundbreaking here it's still well worth a look.
I was delighted to buy this signed copy from The Bookery, a community owned independant bookshop in Crediton.
I was delighted to buy this signed copy from The Bookery, a community owned independant bookshop in Crediton.
December 8, 2022
I'm a big fan of Lucy Worsley, and when I saw that she had written a biography of one my favorite mystery writers, I had to read it. I was not disappointed to say the least. Lucy fleshes out and gives depth to a woman who was truly ahead of her time. Rising to become one of the most successful authors of all time, she was actually quite humble in her life.
Lucy also doesn't shy away from addressing some of the more problematic stereotypes of people Agatha wrote about in her novels. In all, it's a well rounded and highly engaging look at a remarkable woman. Definite recommend.
Lucy also doesn't shy away from addressing some of the more problematic stereotypes of people Agatha wrote about in her novels. In all, it's a well rounded and highly engaging look at a remarkable woman. Definite recommend.
September 13, 2022
3.5 rounded up. For some reason the first half of this didnt really work for me- it was just bland, but the second half was much more interesting.
January 16, 2024
Fairly interesting biography of Agatha Christie, though there wasn’t much I didn’t already know, and I felt not really enough about the books themselves. The chapter about her disappearance is probably the most interesting part, as it goes into more detail than other accounts I have read. But as for reading about her life, Christie’s own fascinating Autobiography is the most interesting book by far.
July 5, 2023
A great biography of a great writer, but if you haven't read many of her books, you might want to steer clear for now as it does have spoilers to quite a lot of her novels.
October 12, 2022
An elusive woman even after reading this book, alas.
As a long-time fan of Lucy Worsley’s documentaries on the Tudors, Austen, mysteries, and romance novels, I squee-ed when I heard she was writing a biography of Christie.
But the book, while readable, is disappointingly superficial. The first third is largely a distillation of Christie’s autobiography. So I say…read the autobiography, which is truthfully more revelatory and amusing than Worsley’s pull quotes.
The second part is Worsley’s explanation of Christie’s breakdown and disappearance after a suicide attempt. While I did learn her attempt to crash her car was more serious than I knew before, the fact that a woman might be distraught after her husband left her for her friend…well, I guess I’ve never found it that shocking. Nor do I think of it as the defining biographical moment of Christie’s life, as Worsley insists.
The final third is better, but I found the attempt to stress the fact Christie’s identity as a woman writer above all else a bit perplexing. Christie often wrote using a man’s voice and had legions of male fans. If anything, the ability to shirk her gender in print is what is fascinating about her work. And the cultural forgetting that often denies women can write well at all while ignoring the fact the bestselling author after the Bible and Shakespeare is a woman who created male and female detectives.
The analysis of the books themselves is also thin-there are spoilers yet no deep analysis of the style and voice, and Christie’s later output is wholly dismissed as inferior, despite such wonderful books as Endless Night.
Part of the problem may be Christie was an intensely private person. I was particularly irritated by Worsley saying Agatha Christie’s greatest character was herself. Christie was an author of such prolific output who created so many marvelous characters; this idea seems clichéd and reductive.
Readable but not a must-read.
As a long-time fan of Lucy Worsley’s documentaries on the Tudors, Austen, mysteries, and romance novels, I squee-ed when I heard she was writing a biography of Christie.
But the book, while readable, is disappointingly superficial. The first third is largely a distillation of Christie’s autobiography. So I say…read the autobiography, which is truthfully more revelatory and amusing than Worsley’s pull quotes.
The second part is Worsley’s explanation of Christie’s breakdown and disappearance after a suicide attempt. While I did learn her attempt to crash her car was more serious than I knew before, the fact that a woman might be distraught after her husband left her for her friend…well, I guess I’ve never found it that shocking. Nor do I think of it as the defining biographical moment of Christie’s life, as Worsley insists.
The final third is better, but I found the attempt to stress the fact Christie’s identity as a woman writer above all else a bit perplexing. Christie often wrote using a man’s voice and had legions of male fans. If anything, the ability to shirk her gender in print is what is fascinating about her work. And the cultural forgetting that often denies women can write well at all while ignoring the fact the bestselling author after the Bible and Shakespeare is a woman who created male and female detectives.
The analysis of the books themselves is also thin-there are spoilers yet no deep analysis of the style and voice, and Christie’s later output is wholly dismissed as inferior, despite such wonderful books as Endless Night.
Part of the problem may be Christie was an intensely private person. I was particularly irritated by Worsley saying Agatha Christie’s greatest character was herself. Christie was an author of such prolific output who created so many marvelous characters; this idea seems clichéd and reductive.
Readable but not a must-read.
October 19, 2022
La mejor biografía que se ha escrito sobre Agatha Christie, su vida personal, psicología, editorial, familiar y hasta sexual quedan al descubierto como nunca antes, y es posible, quizás por primera vez, verla como una mujer de su tiempo, más allá del icono literario en el que se ha convertido.
March 23, 2024
At best synthesizes what others have written about Agatha Christie much more intelligently and much more interestingly. Annoyingly glib, pop-trendy, staggeringly superficial, sensationalist, fanciful and frequently silly. Contains no book analyses — it occasionally regurgitates other people’s — and teems with misnomers, exaggerations and inaccuracies.
Mr Pye is a character in The Moving Finger, not in Murder is Easy. In the film Agatha the eponymous heroine did not try to murder Nancy Neele — she meant to commit suicide and make it look it was Nancy Neele who killed her, thus causing her to hang for it. At Bertram’s Hotel is hardly a ‘riff on celebrity culture.’ Worsley also suggests that there might have been more than a flirtation between Agatha’s daughter Rosalind and Max Mallowan, that indeed they might have been one of the ‘secret couples’ one finds in Agatha Christie’s books. Etc etc
The authorized biography by Janet Morgan remains the best. Laura Thompson might have been a bit gushing and perhaps too reliant on the Mary Westmacotts as a source of information about Christie’s life but she introduced some interesting new material (concerning Max Mallowan’s dalliances and possible infidelity) and she devoted one whole, truly fascinating chapter (An English Murder) to Agatha Christie’s books.
Lucy Worsley is most certainly not as clever as she seems to think, or else she believes her readers are easy to dazzle. (Judging by some of the rave reviews on goodreads that, sadly, appears to be the case.) Despite her impressive credentials, there is something about Lucy’s kooky, color-coordinated, pretty-dolly show-biz persona — as seen on TV — which inclines me to the view that she is, if not exactly a fraud, not quite the real thing either.
Mr Pye is a character in The Moving Finger, not in Murder is Easy. In the film Agatha the eponymous heroine did not try to murder Nancy Neele — she meant to commit suicide and make it look it was Nancy Neele who killed her, thus causing her to hang for it. At Bertram’s Hotel is hardly a ‘riff on celebrity culture.’ Worsley also suggests that there might have been more than a flirtation between Agatha’s daughter Rosalind and Max Mallowan, that indeed they might have been one of the ‘secret couples’ one finds in Agatha Christie’s books. Etc etc
The authorized biography by Janet Morgan remains the best. Laura Thompson might have been a bit gushing and perhaps too reliant on the Mary Westmacotts as a source of information about Christie’s life but she introduced some interesting new material (concerning Max Mallowan’s dalliances and possible infidelity) and she devoted one whole, truly fascinating chapter (An English Murder) to Agatha Christie’s books.
Lucy Worsley is most certainly not as clever as she seems to think, or else she believes her readers are easy to dazzle. (Judging by some of the rave reviews on goodreads that, sadly, appears to be the case.) Despite her impressive credentials, there is something about Lucy’s kooky, color-coordinated, pretty-dolly show-biz persona — as seen on TV — which inclines me to the view that she is, if not exactly a fraud, not quite the real thing either.
October 10, 2023
Lucy Worsley portrait of Dame Agatha Christie is full of great details, and complements the autobiography I read by Christie some years ago. Worsley used correspondence and other materials to create a better picture incidents and events mentioned in the autobiography, while also providing context with information about historical sentiments of the period. I also liked that Worsley didn't dance around two aspects of Christie: the author's somewhat indifferent parenting, and the fact that Christie's stories were filled with bigoted characters, and Christie's own anti-semitism, which editors had to filter out increasingly from her writings as the years progressed post-WWII.
Agatha Christie was a fascinating woman, living life on her terms (after the end of her first marriage), and building a circle of friends and relations she loved to socialize with and rely on, and also dictating terms of how her books were to be published. An introvert who was uncomfortable with the spotlight, she was also reluctant naming herself as an author, no doubt due to her Victorian upbringing, when women of her station were not supposed to work for a living. What is not unexpected is the disdain levelled at her by male critics and directors*, who could not countenance a successful, forthright woman who enjoyed enormous, worldwide popularity for her writing.
She lived a long and happy life, and left behind a big body of work, much of which I've enjoyed. If you're a Christie fan, this is a worthwhile biography to check out.
* Christie produced not only many novels, but also several plays that enjoyed success on stage.
Agatha Christie was a fascinating woman, living life on her terms (after the end of her first marriage), and building a circle of friends and relations she loved to socialize with and rely on, and also dictating terms of how her books were to be published. An introvert who was uncomfortable with the spotlight, she was also reluctant naming herself as an author, no doubt due to her Victorian upbringing, when women of her station were not supposed to work for a living. What is not unexpected is the disdain levelled at her by male critics and directors*, who could not countenance a successful, forthright woman who enjoyed enormous, worldwide popularity for her writing.
She lived a long and happy life, and left behind a big body of work, much of which I've enjoyed. If you're a Christie fan, this is a worthwhile biography to check out.
* Christie produced not only many novels, but also several plays that enjoyed success on stage.
September 22, 2022
Lucy Worsley is fab - she’s as good in print as on TV. This is intelligent history in plain English with a warm hug and bucket loads of passion. She debunks many myths that surround Christie’s life placing things reported of her in the culture and context in which they were written. Loved it and made we want to critically re read some of her key mystery novels.
May 30, 2022
(Read as a proof copy, hence review prior to publication).
This is really really good. The previous official biog I've read managed to make Christie's life rather tedious. This rockets along, fast, frothy and subtly furious. Absolutely loved it.
This is really really good. The previous official biog I've read managed to make Christie's life rather tedious. This rockets along, fast, frothy and subtly furious. Absolutely loved it.
October 10, 2022
Sorry to be the party-pooper, but up until the chapter on the 1926 disappearance I found this to be quite a flimsy affair. The disappearance is well-covered - although (like the book as a whole) I'm not sure how much is new - and it picks up after that. For a bit. Until reverting back to its flimsiness for the final third. Like Jonathan Dimbleby's Barbarossa, this feels like one of those products where you find a prominent personality, get them to write about a subject that will sell, then tot up the sales and the cash. I've never read anything by Worsley before, nor - despite her ubiquity - watched any of her programmes. But I'm told she's a 'personality'. It comes across in the many personal asides she makes throughout the book. Personally, I prefer biographies where the writer stays well out of the way. All this doesn't make the book terrible; if you haven't read a biography of Christie then this is perfectly adequate. But it feels more like a commercial product than a lifetime's work.
March 8, 2023
3.5 ⭐️ As someone who’s never read other biographies on Agatha Christie or her auto biography (I must read it now!) I enjoyed knowing more of what lays behind her books and personal life. The reason this didn’t get a higher rating is the personal opinions the author inserted quite often that either were irrelevant to Agatha Christie/or to me conforming her to our modern view on life/thinking.
Overall interesting but could’ve been better.
Overall interesting but could’ve been better.
November 2, 2023
Biographies (and all non-fiction work) are hard to review. By nature they are less fantastical, less suspenseful and (yes) sometimes that means they can be "boring".
So what makes a good biography? To me (and I am by no means an expert) a good biography is an honest and stark depiction of the subject matter. The trap the biographer can so easily fall into is the 'heroification' of the subject, and unfortunately for Worsley, I think this is what happened to her. Worsley had an idea as to who Agatha was, and refused to deviate from that narrative.
Worsley did a good job portraying Christie's life, she wove characters from Christie's own work into the book; many of which seemed to be inspired by Christie's life. But Worsley did not seem to have a handle on who Christie was as a person.
Worsley seemed set on depicting Agatha Christie as a modern woman, she made a lot of assumptions about Agatha's motivations and true intentions -- some that starkly contrasted Christie's own words and actions. This made for a somewhat confusing narrative; was Agatha Christie shy or a 'man magnet'? Was she the devoted loving home-maker or the strong willed writer? By the end of the book, we still don't know (maybe i should have known from the title.)
Also, this book dedicated a large number of pages to taxes. which really did feel 'boring'
So what makes a good biography? To me (and I am by no means an expert) a good biography is an honest and stark depiction of the subject matter. The trap the biographer can so easily fall into is the 'heroification' of the subject, and unfortunately for Worsley, I think this is what happened to her. Worsley had an idea as to who Agatha was, and refused to deviate from that narrative.
Worsley did a good job portraying Christie's life, she wove characters from Christie's own work into the book; many of which seemed to be inspired by Christie's life. But Worsley did not seem to have a handle on who Christie was as a person.
Worsley seemed set on depicting Agatha Christie as a modern woman, she made a lot of assumptions about Agatha's motivations and true intentions -- some that starkly contrasted Christie's own words and actions. This made for a somewhat confusing narrative; was Agatha Christie shy or a 'man magnet'? Was she the devoted loving home-maker or the strong willed writer? By the end of the book, we still don't know (maybe i should have known from the title.)
Also, this book dedicated a large number of pages to taxes. which really did feel 'boring'
September 26, 2022
I've been dying to get my hands on this audio version of Lucy Worsley's latest in depth look into a famous female. Having read her books on Austen and Queen Victoria I knew this would be a well written, interesting, often lighthearted look at the life of an extraordinary woman.
I learned lots of facts about Agatha Christie and enjoyed the almost novel-like feel if this biography. Let's face Agatha Christie's life often seemed to read like fiction. From her beginnings as a child brought up in a wealthy family who lost their fortune, through her rushed first marriage to Archie to the end of her life when she had become a dame, a 40 year marriage to her beloved Max and become the world's most successful female writer. This book gives you everything you'll need to know.
I treated myself and listened to the wonderful Lucy read her own work and who better to present her findings. I can't heap enough praise on it but then (cards on the table) I've been a huge fan of both Lucy Worsley and Dame Agatha's for a long time so I am biased.
However if you're only even vaguely interested in the author herself you'll still find this book fascinating. She led such a full life - wife, mother, amateur archaeologist and author, Agatha Christie loved nesting and bought numerous homes, which she loved shopping for to fill. Her life with Max Mallowan as an amateur archaeologist was just as fulfilling but she always came back to her writing (if only to pay for all the houses, trinkets and digs).
I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes a well written and researched biography or anyone who is a fan of Dame Agatha (or Lucy). The audio book is a joy to listen to and I loved it.
I learned lots of facts about Agatha Christie and enjoyed the almost novel-like feel if this biography. Let's face Agatha Christie's life often seemed to read like fiction. From her beginnings as a child brought up in a wealthy family who lost their fortune, through her rushed first marriage to Archie to the end of her life when she had become a dame, a 40 year marriage to her beloved Max and become the world's most successful female writer. This book gives you everything you'll need to know.
I treated myself and listened to the wonderful Lucy read her own work and who better to present her findings. I can't heap enough praise on it but then (cards on the table) I've been a huge fan of both Lucy Worsley and Dame Agatha's for a long time so I am biased.
However if you're only even vaguely interested in the author herself you'll still find this book fascinating. She led such a full life - wife, mother, amateur archaeologist and author, Agatha Christie loved nesting and bought numerous homes, which she loved shopping for to fill. Her life with Max Mallowan as an amateur archaeologist was just as fulfilling but she always came back to her writing (if only to pay for all the houses, trinkets and digs).
I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes a well written and researched biography or anyone who is a fan of Dame Agatha (or Lucy). The audio book is a joy to listen to and I loved it.
October 19, 2022
SO very happy I read this biography about the mysterious AC. Mysterious, not because she was that unusual or had anything to hide, but simply because she valued her privacy. Unlike so many today, she did not want to spill her guts to the world for the amusement/entertainment of others. This wonderfully balanced bio does not paint the picture of a disturbed, confused or troubled woman, but a hugely talented, yet very ordinary woman in search of love, stability, companionship and happiness. That she was such an amazingly and consistently successful author over the course of a very long life, threw her constantly in the public eye which can never be a good thing for someone who seeks seclusion. Her every book/play/decision—especially as she became more famous—was under scrutiny, and as she was a wealthy, popular and successful woman her ups and downs were critiqued all the more.
Yet despite all this pressure, she continued to produce works of high quality at a prodigious rate almost until her death. To be continued…
After reading a recent review* on a bio about Ms. Christie, which told me almost nothing about her, I decided I needed to learn for myself what she was like. Decided to listen to this for my forthcoming trips to Ft. Smith and St. Louis. So far, the author seems very level-headed and willing to entertain all previous conceptions/descriptions of AC and point out their strengths and weaknesses. Exactly what a good biographer should do.
*Can't recall the reviewer or the biography.
Yet despite all this pressure, she continued to produce works of high quality at a prodigious rate almost until her death. To be continued…
After reading a recent review* on a bio about Ms. Christie, which told me almost nothing about her, I decided I needed to learn for myself what she was like. Decided to listen to this for my forthcoming trips to Ft. Smith and St. Louis. So far, the author seems very level-headed and willing to entertain all previous conceptions/descriptions of AC and point out their strengths and weaknesses. Exactly what a good biographer should do.
*Can't recall the reviewer or the biography.
Currently reading
November 3, 2022I'm a huge fan of Lucy Worsley's TV show, so adding this to my list.
I believe I spotted an error in the televised version of the book. Agatha had just the one daughter but Lucy credited her with a son or two. Lucy may have been thinking of Archibald Christie's son with his second wife.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I believe I spotted an error in the televised version of the book. Agatha had just the one daughter but Lucy credited her with a son or two. Lucy may have been thinking of Archibald Christie's son with his second wife.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
May 12, 2023
Agatha Christie is surely familiar to most readers. She is, after all, one of the best selling fiction authors of all time alongside Shakespeare. I must confess to only reading a few of her many books. I've seen some of the film and tv adaptations too. Her books, personally, has created an image of an author who lived a genteel life in pastoral England. It is quite interesting to read of the real story of a very complex woman born during a very different age. The audiobook is quite well narrated. I have enjoyed getting to know the life behind the famous name.
Read
January 11, 2023Well this was just an absolute cream tea of a book. Real river at the bottom of the garden kind of experience if you follow me. LOVELY, five stars, would immerse psychically into for respite from this cold and measly world again, no question. Strongly recommend.
And now here: I've copied out all the places I placed sticky notes and can return the volume to the library.
Page 97: If you want to know how strongly the highbrows felt middlebrow culture was second-rate and distressingly commercial, let Virginia Woolf step forth. ‘If any man, woman, dog, cat, or half-crushed worm dares call me “middlebrow”,’ she wrote, ‘I will take my pen and stab him dead.’
Page 98: Desperately short of funds, they decide to set up an investigation agency. Tommy is a poor man’s Sherlock Holmes, with hardly enough money even for tea and buns.
Page 101: She was beginning to act as if she were well able to buy her own buns and tea.
Page 102: ‘I don’t like describing people or places,’ she once admitted, ‘I just want to get on with the dialogue.’
Page 120: A wise friend would have warned Agatha that when a man tells you he cannot be relied upon, there’s no reason not to believe him, and leave him. ‘Evil people are those who will not or cannot grow up,’ Agatha wrote. ‘A man who is a child,’ says one of her characters, ‘is the most frightening thing in the world.’
Page 136: The great injustice of Agatha Christie’s life was not that her husband betrayed her while she was mourning her mother. Nor was it even the mental distress.
It was the fact that she was shamed for her illness in the nation’s newspapers in such a public way that ever since people have suspected her of duplicity and lies.
Page 190: ‘Perhaps I am (little Piglet!) your favourite size!! Do say I am!’ [Agatha in a letter to Max]
Page 197: Homemaking was vital to her both in life, and art. ‘You have to be concerned with a house. With where people live,’ she once said about her novels.
Page 199: One of the ways she kept up this idea she wasn’t what she called ‘a bona fide author’ was by not having a dedicated writing room. She did her writing unostentatiously, round the edges of what she professed to think were the larger matters of life: shopping, eating, relaxing [...] Working in her bedroom, in odd corners, she was as unlike the conventional idea of the anguished author as possible.
Page 255: Agatha’s flat at Lawn Road gave her not only time to write herself whole once again, but also the necessary solitude. And a period of solitude proved the hinge upon which her next Westmacott story would turn. Contrary to her detective novel practice, which involved a long period of plotting, she wrote it all in a rush. Indeed, she found herself growing obsessed. ‘It’s astonishing,’ she wrote of non-detective fiction, ‘how one always wants to do something that isnt quite one’s work. Like papering walls–which one does exceedingly badly, but enjoys because it doesn’t count as work.’
Absent in the Spring is 50,000 words long, yet Agatha wrote it in just three days. On the third day, she even failed to go to her work at the hospital, ‘because I did not dare leave my book . . . I had to go on until I had finished it.’ She sat there writing, ‘in a white heat’ [...]
Page 286: But opening up the notebooks is a tantalising experience, because much of what’s in them simply doesn’t make sense. More than anything else, the notebooks reveal Agatha’s low-key approach to her work. Novels are plotted across multiple volumes, apparently according to whichever one happened to be to hand. Notebook 31, for example, has pages dated 1955,1965, then back to 1963, then ‘1965 Cont’ and then on to 1972. She didn’t even bother to use the pages in the right order. And the notebooks also reveal how work for Agatha was threaded right through life: alongside ideas for characters and plots are a list of furniture; a reminder to make a hair appointment; a note of the train time to Torquay.
Page 287: Agatha’s handwriting–in pencil, biro or ink–changed over the course of her lifetime. In her most creative period, before and after the warm it’s almost illegible, as if the ideas come spilling out too fast to be captured in a way that would make sense to anyone else. Its exuberance captures the joyful, lively Agatha who hid her joyful liveliness from people she didn’t know well.
Page 294: Suddenly, she explained, she was enjoying working on her play, ‘that wonderful moment in writing which does not usually last long, but which carries one on with a terrific verve as a large wave carries you to shore . . . I think it only took me two or three weeks.’
Page 295: Perhaps Gregg’s real beef was that Agatha didn’t feel a strong need to be liked: as Cotes admitted, ‘she wished at all times to relieve herself of spare talk and theatrical chitter-chatter.’
Page 299: But apart from the misery of being watched and judged, there was a kind of freedom in not being thin.
Page 300: Max once described his wife as combining ‘outer diffidence with a massive inner confidence’, and there are sometimes hints that her public ‘shyness’ was less a genuine character trait than a weapon. Certainly this was a view held by male associates who found her less tractable than expected.
Page 315: ‘Rich hot lobster for dinner!’ she crowed, ‘hardly felt my age!!!’ [at her seventieth birthday party]
In staging her life as the lady of the manor, Agatha was acting out a role just as so many of her characters did. And her hyperawareness of this fact–that all of us are really acting–is essential to her art. It’s the thing that makes her perspective a little bit similar to that of a queer writer.
Page 316: One of the advantages of being seventy is that you really don’t care any longer what anyone says about you. It’s a thing that can’t be helped–just slightly annoying.
Page 320: As Agath’s friend A.L. Rowse put it, she was ‘a compulsive writer: writing was her life. Or one of her two lives–for outwardly she had a full and normal social life, family, two marriages, friends, hospitality, entertainments, housekeeping (which she was very good at), shopping (which she very much enjoyed.)’ Publisher Philip Ziegler, a guest at Greenway on several occasions, also noticed that she couldn’t quite keep herself away from the typewriter. ‘Absolutely nothing,’ he thought, ‘was going to stop her indulging in a certain amount of work.’
Pages 327-8: In the last stages of Miss Marple’s life, once she’s detached from St Mary Mead, she develops more and more common ground with her creator: she travels to Barbados, as Agatha fif in 1956; she stays in a luxurious hotel (something Agatha had long enjoyed) and finally, in Nemesis, she becomes rich. And the title of this final book, taken from Greek myth, rightly suggests that Miss Marple has also become superhuman, a modern equivalent of the ancient goddess Nemesis, pre-patriarchal, inexorable.
And, it has to be admitted, almost inhuman. This aspect of Miss Marple had long existed. Here she is back in 1950, in A Murder Is Announced, when another character notices ‘the grimness of her lips and the severe frosty light in those usually gentle blue eyes. Grimness, an inexorable determination.’
Page 331: Endless Night was produced in just six weeks, Agatha’s last compulsive writing spell. ‘It’s rather different from anything I’ve done before,’ she explained in a pre-publication interview, ‘more serious, a tragedy really.’
Page 332: The New York Times agreed with [Dorothy Olding’s bitter disappointment in Passenger to Frankfurt]. ‘Everyone is entitled to write a bad novel,’ ran its review, ‘but somebody should interpose himself and discourage its publication.’
Page 345: It was a lifelong intellectual conversation between two questing minds, with companionship at its heart. ‘No one else,’ Max explained, ‘could have been for me the perfect companion that you ae. It happened that you and I just fitted together: now and again two sould meet that fit, not because they are alike, but because they are counterparts.’ ‘She possessed so many of the things I lack,’ he thought, ‘a saintly humility . . . her inner spirit lived in near sympathy with Christ.’ This was a companionate marriage that proved remarkably endurable and successful.
Page 352: Eventually Rosalind decided a controlled glimpse of her mother’s archive might help reshape the narrative. In 1984, she allowed author Janet Morgan to publish a biography of Agatha Christie that was thorough, fair, and scrupulous. Morgan described her own impression of Christie as ‘strange, manipulative, fertile in thinking of ways to murder and trick,’ but a closer acquaintance with the evidence changed her mind. She concluded that [Christie] was a consummate professional, and a kind and happy person. So much is indisputable. But I think there’s something more that Morgan and the family at the time didn’t fully acknowledge. In 2022 it’s okay in a way that it wasn’t, in the 1980s, to accept that a woman might have been kind and hardworking, but also ‘strange, manipulative, fertile in thinking of ways to murder and trick.’ That’s not a disparagement. It’s an acknowledgement of a woman’s complexity.
Page 354: It took two female scholars to begin the reappraisal. Gillian Gill, publishing in 1990, refused to take Christie at face value. I love the way Gill began to feel through the veils towards the elusive genius who lay behind. For a start, she pointed out that Agatha wasn’t a single person. Over a lifetime, the woman we’re talking about was constantly reinventing herself. Agatha Miller became Mrs Archibald Christie, Agatha Christie, Teresa Neele, Mrs Mallowan and Mary Westmacott, then a beloved grandmother called Nima who ended up as Dame Agatha. And Gill also began to dismantle Agatha’s notorious sense of privacy. It had been both a wonderful and terrible thing. It allowed her to live her life as she wished, yet it destroyed her reputation. If the writer herself was unwilling to speak of her work and take it seriously, why should anyone else?
And now here: I've copied out all the places I placed sticky notes and can return the volume to the library.
Page 97: If you want to know how strongly the highbrows felt middlebrow culture was second-rate and distressingly commercial, let Virginia Woolf step forth. ‘If any man, woman, dog, cat, or half-crushed worm dares call me “middlebrow”,’ she wrote, ‘I will take my pen and stab him dead.’
Page 98: Desperately short of funds, they decide to set up an investigation agency. Tommy is a poor man’s Sherlock Holmes, with hardly enough money even for tea and buns.
Page 101: She was beginning to act as if she were well able to buy her own buns and tea.
Page 102: ‘I don’t like describing people or places,’ she once admitted, ‘I just want to get on with the dialogue.’
Page 120: A wise friend would have warned Agatha that when a man tells you he cannot be relied upon, there’s no reason not to believe him, and leave him. ‘Evil people are those who will not or cannot grow up,’ Agatha wrote. ‘A man who is a child,’ says one of her characters, ‘is the most frightening thing in the world.’
Page 136: The great injustice of Agatha Christie’s life was not that her husband betrayed her while she was mourning her mother. Nor was it even the mental distress.
It was the fact that she was shamed for her illness in the nation’s newspapers in such a public way that ever since people have suspected her of duplicity and lies.
Page 190: ‘Perhaps I am (little Piglet!) your favourite size!! Do say I am!’ [Agatha in a letter to Max]
Page 197: Homemaking was vital to her both in life, and art. ‘You have to be concerned with a house. With where people live,’ she once said about her novels.
Page 199: One of the ways she kept up this idea she wasn’t what she called ‘a bona fide author’ was by not having a dedicated writing room. She did her writing unostentatiously, round the edges of what she professed to think were the larger matters of life: shopping, eating, relaxing [...] Working in her bedroom, in odd corners, she was as unlike the conventional idea of the anguished author as possible.
Page 255: Agatha’s flat at Lawn Road gave her not only time to write herself whole once again, but also the necessary solitude. And a period of solitude proved the hinge upon which her next Westmacott story would turn. Contrary to her detective novel practice, which involved a long period of plotting, she wrote it all in a rush. Indeed, she found herself growing obsessed. ‘It’s astonishing,’ she wrote of non-detective fiction, ‘how one always wants to do something that isnt quite one’s work. Like papering walls–which one does exceedingly badly, but enjoys because it doesn’t count as work.’
Absent in the Spring is 50,000 words long, yet Agatha wrote it in just three days. On the third day, she even failed to go to her work at the hospital, ‘because I did not dare leave my book . . . I had to go on until I had finished it.’ She sat there writing, ‘in a white heat’ [...]
Page 286: But opening up the notebooks is a tantalising experience, because much of what’s in them simply doesn’t make sense. More than anything else, the notebooks reveal Agatha’s low-key approach to her work. Novels are plotted across multiple volumes, apparently according to whichever one happened to be to hand. Notebook 31, for example, has pages dated 1955,1965, then back to 1963, then ‘1965 Cont’ and then on to 1972. She didn’t even bother to use the pages in the right order. And the notebooks also reveal how work for Agatha was threaded right through life: alongside ideas for characters and plots are a list of furniture; a reminder to make a hair appointment; a note of the train time to Torquay.
Page 287: Agatha’s handwriting–in pencil, biro or ink–changed over the course of her lifetime. In her most creative period, before and after the warm it’s almost illegible, as if the ideas come spilling out too fast to be captured in a way that would make sense to anyone else. Its exuberance captures the joyful, lively Agatha who hid her joyful liveliness from people she didn’t know well.
Page 294: Suddenly, she explained, she was enjoying working on her play, ‘that wonderful moment in writing which does not usually last long, but which carries one on with a terrific verve as a large wave carries you to shore . . . I think it only took me two or three weeks.’
Page 295: Perhaps Gregg’s real beef was that Agatha didn’t feel a strong need to be liked: as Cotes admitted, ‘she wished at all times to relieve herself of spare talk and theatrical chitter-chatter.’
Page 299: But apart from the misery of being watched and judged, there was a kind of freedom in not being thin.
Page 300: Max once described his wife as combining ‘outer diffidence with a massive inner confidence’, and there are sometimes hints that her public ‘shyness’ was less a genuine character trait than a weapon. Certainly this was a view held by male associates who found her less tractable than expected.
Page 315: ‘Rich hot lobster for dinner!’ she crowed, ‘hardly felt my age!!!’ [at her seventieth birthday party]
In staging her life as the lady of the manor, Agatha was acting out a role just as so many of her characters did. And her hyperawareness of this fact–that all of us are really acting–is essential to her art. It’s the thing that makes her perspective a little bit similar to that of a queer writer.
Page 316: One of the advantages of being seventy is that you really don’t care any longer what anyone says about you. It’s a thing that can’t be helped–just slightly annoying.
Page 320: As Agath’s friend A.L. Rowse put it, she was ‘a compulsive writer: writing was her life. Or one of her two lives–for outwardly she had a full and normal social life, family, two marriages, friends, hospitality, entertainments, housekeeping (which she was very good at), shopping (which she very much enjoyed.)’ Publisher Philip Ziegler, a guest at Greenway on several occasions, also noticed that she couldn’t quite keep herself away from the typewriter. ‘Absolutely nothing,’ he thought, ‘was going to stop her indulging in a certain amount of work.’
Pages 327-8: In the last stages of Miss Marple’s life, once she’s detached from St Mary Mead, she develops more and more common ground with her creator: she travels to Barbados, as Agatha fif in 1956; she stays in a luxurious hotel (something Agatha had long enjoyed) and finally, in Nemesis, she becomes rich. And the title of this final book, taken from Greek myth, rightly suggests that Miss Marple has also become superhuman, a modern equivalent of the ancient goddess Nemesis, pre-patriarchal, inexorable.
And, it has to be admitted, almost inhuman. This aspect of Miss Marple had long existed. Here she is back in 1950, in A Murder Is Announced, when another character notices ‘the grimness of her lips and the severe frosty light in those usually gentle blue eyes. Grimness, an inexorable determination.’
Page 331: Endless Night was produced in just six weeks, Agatha’s last compulsive writing spell. ‘It’s rather different from anything I’ve done before,’ she explained in a pre-publication interview, ‘more serious, a tragedy really.’
Page 332: The New York Times agreed with [Dorothy Olding’s bitter disappointment in Passenger to Frankfurt]. ‘Everyone is entitled to write a bad novel,’ ran its review, ‘but somebody should interpose himself and discourage its publication.’
Page 345: It was a lifelong intellectual conversation between two questing minds, with companionship at its heart. ‘No one else,’ Max explained, ‘could have been for me the perfect companion that you ae. It happened that you and I just fitted together: now and again two sould meet that fit, not because they are alike, but because they are counterparts.’ ‘She possessed so many of the things I lack,’ he thought, ‘a saintly humility . . . her inner spirit lived in near sympathy with Christ.’ This was a companionate marriage that proved remarkably endurable and successful.
Page 352: Eventually Rosalind decided a controlled glimpse of her mother’s archive might help reshape the narrative. In 1984, she allowed author Janet Morgan to publish a biography of Agatha Christie that was thorough, fair, and scrupulous. Morgan described her own impression of Christie as ‘strange, manipulative, fertile in thinking of ways to murder and trick,’ but a closer acquaintance with the evidence changed her mind. She concluded that [Christie] was a consummate professional, and a kind and happy person. So much is indisputable. But I think there’s something more that Morgan and the family at the time didn’t fully acknowledge. In 2022 it’s okay in a way that it wasn’t, in the 1980s, to accept that a woman might have been kind and hardworking, but also ‘strange, manipulative, fertile in thinking of ways to murder and trick.’ That’s not a disparagement. It’s an acknowledgement of a woman’s complexity.
Page 354: It took two female scholars to begin the reappraisal. Gillian Gill, publishing in 1990, refused to take Christie at face value. I love the way Gill began to feel through the veils towards the elusive genius who lay behind. For a start, she pointed out that Agatha wasn’t a single person. Over a lifetime, the woman we’re talking about was constantly reinventing herself. Agatha Miller became Mrs Archibald Christie, Agatha Christie, Teresa Neele, Mrs Mallowan and Mary Westmacott, then a beloved grandmother called Nima who ended up as Dame Agatha. And Gill also began to dismantle Agatha’s notorious sense of privacy. It had been both a wonderful and terrible thing. It allowed her to live her life as she wished, yet it destroyed her reputation. If the writer herself was unwilling to speak of her work and take it seriously, why should anyone else?
September 14, 2022
4.5 *
I have been a fan of Christie's fiction since I was a teenager. Christie was not just a prolific author, but a trailblazer for women in literature and business, as well as in seeking psychological treatment and using psychology in her fiction. Worsley's exhaustive biography was informative, entertaining, and enlightening. She does not gloss over problems with Christie's writing or her beliefs, putting them in context where appropriate but still calling a spade a spade. This biography has cemented my admiration is both Christie and Worsley.
I have been a fan of Christie's fiction since I was a teenager. Christie was not just a prolific author, but a trailblazer for women in literature and business, as well as in seeking psychological treatment and using psychology in her fiction. Worsley's exhaustive biography was informative, entertaining, and enlightening. She does not gloss over problems with Christie's writing or her beliefs, putting them in context where appropriate but still calling a spade a spade. This biography has cemented my admiration is both Christie and Worsley.
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