Agatha’s perfect gentleman

David Suchet and Richard E. Grant lead a star-studded tribute to celebrate 100 years of the world’s greatest detective, Hercule Poirot

Whatever the relationship between Britain and Europe, one cross-Channel partnership will forever remain inviolate. A hundred years ago, Agatha Christie (inset, above) published her debut novel to almost instant popularity and critical acclaim, but The Mysterious Affair At Styles was also our introduction to the Belgian detective with whom she became virtually synonymous.

To mark this landmark centenary, Richard E. Grant presents a celebratory documentary that tells the story of the interlocking success of the Queen of Crime and the analytical sleuth who deployed his ‘little grey cells’ to bring murderers to justice.

A stellar line-up of Christie fans pays testament to her creation, including screen Poirots David Suchet (above, with Sarah Woodward) and Kenneth Branagh.

Zoë Wanamaker and Amanda Abbington are among the guest stars who appeared alongside Suchet’s Poirot and also pay tribute, while Christie’s great-grandson, James Prichard, reveals lovely details about the great dame’s private family life.

Christie was an impressive figure even in her later years. Asked why she was so fascinated by crime, she replies with admirable plain speaking: ‘I don’t know that I’m really fascinated by it. I just began writing about it and then one continues.

I’ve always liked detective stories.’

Which is a rather understated explanation for a record-breaking career responsible for two billion books sold and counting (she is outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare). Poirot is the beating heart of Christie’s work, featuring in 33 of her novels, three plays and dozens of short stories.

Grant discovers how we owe the detective’s existence to Christie’s experiences during the First World War, when the sight of Belgian refugees inspired her choice of the detective’s nationality, and there are other moments when life spilled over into her fiction. She drew on her knowledge as a wartime nurse to select poisons for her mysteries’ murders, and also used her own travels to conjure up settings on the Orient Express and the Nile.

Plus, there’s an intriguing trawl through the screen incarnations of the Belgian detective: not only Suchet and the hypermoustachioed Branagh but also Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov. Look out for an astonishing snippet of the first film Poirot, Austin Trevor in 1934’s Lord Edgware Dies. His accent is so thick it’s beyond parody but – do not adjust your set – he sports an entirely clean-shaven upper lip. Sacré bleu!