Agatha Christie by Lucy Worsley

Agatha Christie is the biography of the famous crime writer by historian Lucy Worsley. I bought it a few months ago, at the same time as I bought In Memoriam. Waterstones had a buy one get one half price offer and I needed to buy another book. I chose Agatha Christie by Lucy Worsley. Then, as soon as I got home, I thought ‘Why did I buy that?’.

I was a big Agatha Christie fan as a child. I started reading her books before I’d even left primary school (!), after seeing the Miss Marple TV series. By the time I was 15, I’d read nearly all of her books. I haven’t read one since!  I finally got round to reading this biography after reading End of Story, which made a few references to Agatha Christie. It felt like it was telling me that the time was right to read the book I’d regretted buying.

Well, I started reading it and I instantly loved it. It turns out that buying it was a very good idea after all.

Agatha Christie led an intriguing life. It wasn’t just the writing. She was a wartime nurse. She spent many months on archeological digs in places like Iraq. She drove her car fast and used to go surfing back in the 1920s. And she famously disappeared in 1926.

There is so much which is interesting about this incredibly well-researched biography. Apart from being the story of a life, it is a great piece of history – taking us from 1890, when Queen Victoria was still on the throne, through two World Wars all the way to 1976. My mind boggles that someone born in Victorian times was alive when I was.

There are also plenty of references to Agatha Christie’s novels too and how they were inspired, intentionally or unintentionally, by her own life. I should have made notes as I went along as to which were particularly good novels and which weren’t as good because I really would like to go back and re-read some now.

If you are interested in Agatha Christie or in British history, I can really recommend this very well-written biography. Next time, I will trust my instincts when I decide to buy a slightly unusual book!