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Agatha Christie at Home

22 Feb 10 10:57AM

Agatha Christie at Home

Written by Hilary Macaskill

I first thought about writing a book on Agatha Christie’s homes when I visited the gardens of Greenway, while researching a travel article about The ABC Murders in the 70th anniversary year of its publication. I was visiting the scenes of the murders - Andover, Bexhill, Churston Ferrers and Doncaster – and, while in Churston, I was taken to Greenway. Many years before, on a boat trip down the River Dart to Dartmouth, I had seen the elegant cream Georgian house, perched on its promontory overlooking the river, and had been captivated by its distant allure and the secret woodland gardens surrounding it. When, four years ago, I wandered through the gardens and explored the boathouse and the battery – scenes of murders in two of her novels (Dead Man’s Folly and Five Little Pigs) – I could hardly believe that it was now possible to walk in Agatha Christie’s footsteps. After leaving there, I re-read Dead Man’s Folly, which was like a guidebook to the estate, and then her autobiography. There I discovered her enthusiasm for acquiring and decorating houses – at one point she had owned eight. I realised that here was an aspect of her life that had not been much written about.

Though, goodness knows, much else had been, as I discovered when I began my search through libraries and archives. I came across all sorts of angles to the work of the crime novelist – her use of proverbs, an analysis of her poisons, a collection of cover designs. Some books were huge and compendious reference books such as Charles Osborne’s The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie – which, along with Dawn Sova’s Agatha Christie A-Z, provided excellent aid for me as I tracked down the novels inspired by or written in different homes or by Devon, her home county.

There are, of course, the two acclaimed biographies - Janet Morgan’s commissioned soon after Agatha’s death, and the more recent one by Laura Thompson in 2007 - but there have also been biographies of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, by Anne Hart. James Cresswell has gone further in Miss Marple and All her Characters: only part of his book is dedicated to a profile of Miss Marple but there is a detailed catalogue of every character appearing in all the books which feature her. Most striking of all, perhaps, is her role in Reflecting on Miss Marple, in which she is transformed into feminist heroine.

The Queen of Crime has inspired many other works including psychological treatises, collections of recipes and plays. I came across many books about many aspects of Agatha Christie at the home of her grandson, Mathew Prichard, who had kindly invited me there to see if I could find any relevant material for my book. Before leaving me to browse through the archive, he showed me examples of Agatha’s notebooks, which – as visitors to this website have known for a while – have formed the basis of a distinctive perspective on her work in John Curran’s detailed investigation, Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks.

Psychoanalysts, linguistics experts and scientists have devoted considerable time to exploring facets of the author and her work. Pierre Bayard uses psychoanalysis in Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? to correct Agatha Christie’s conclusion (he says she got the wrong murderer). Another academic George Bryan concentrates on her use of proverbs. A professor of pharmacy, Michael Gerald, analyses the poisons used.

In the end, the most useful sources for me were Agatha Christie’s own writings: her autobiography, her memoir about the time in the Middle East Come Tell Me How You Live, her correspondence (with her husband Max Mallowan, agent Edmund Cork and friends) – and her novels. It was a combination of these which gave an insight into her homes from her birthplace Ashfield in Torquay to her ‘dream house’ Greenway, opened to the public this year by the National Trust, and into her beloved Devon.

Agatha Christie at Home is published by Frances Lincoln.

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AndreaWilkins 05 Mar 10 at 10:11a.m.

this blog has been interesting to read, and given me a few books i didn't know existed ie the different autobiographical books

thank you :)