Agatha Christie: Lucy Worsley on the Mystery Queen
Lucy Worsley investigates the world’s most celebrated crime writer…
Friday, 9pm (NI, 11.05pm), BBC2 Factual (box set, BBC iplayer)
Historian Lucy Worsley takes a look at the life of the most successful novelist of all time in a three-part documentary. She explores the writer’s early life to uncover the origins of her talent and finds some secrets along the way…
AGATHA CHRISTIE: LUCY WORSLEY ON THE MYSTERY QUEEN
Friday, 9pm (NI, 11.05pm), BBC2 Factual (box set, iplayer)
As a huge fan of Agatha Christie, historian Lucy Worsley has always been fascinated by what inspired the bestselling author.
Now, in BBC2’S three-part documentary, Lucy examines how Agatha’s private troubles – including her disappearance in 1926 – and the seismic social shifts of the 20th century influenced her work.
‘She experienced two world wars, divorce, was a working single mum, and struggled with mental health,’ says
Lucy. ‘But her books also tell the story of the century and how manners, morals and attitudes changed.’
Lucy begins by looking at how the creator of Hercule
Poirot and Miss
Marple was shaped by her apparently idyllic upbringing in Devon.
Nightmare
‘Her childhood was loving. Then her father died, the family lost its money and she became anxious,’ reveals Lucy. ‘She had this recurring nightmare. She’d dream her mother had turned into this killer. That comes up in her stories – that the murderer is always among us.’
Lucy also explores how, during World War One, Agatha became a hospital dispenser and came into close contact with death and the potentially poisonous medicines that were later integral to her writing. This was a feature in her first novel in 1920, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which introduced unconventional sleuth Poirot. ‘Agatha saw things that nice ladies weren’t supposed to,’ explains Lucy. ‘And Poirot is an outsider, too, with his foreign accent – everybody overlooks him but he’s got the biggest brain in the room. Agatha was a rule-breaker!’