Fans will admire Worsley’s identification of real-life people, places and phrases that Christie upcycled into her fiction. She saw both World Wars and the ensuing social, economic, and psychologic aftermath for the British people and West Asia (during her travels there). 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. Her publishers found her a formidable client, so there was definitely ambition there even if she wouldn't admit to it.

It’s astonishing,’ she wrote of non-detective fiction, ‘how one always wants to do something that isnt quite one’s work. With access to personal letters and papers that have rarely been seen, Lucy Worsley's biography is both authoritative and entertaining and makes us realise what an extraordinary pioneer Agatha Christie was - truly a woman who wrote the twentieth century. I listened to the audiobook, also narrated by Lucy Worsley, and couldn't have been happier with my choice. 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?

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 . However, the breadth of what Agatha Christie experienced in a lifetime was astonishing to me to see it all displayed. It’s also the story of a person who, despite the obstacles of class and gender, became an astonishingly successful working woman.

To me (and I am by no means an expert) a good biography is an honest and stark depiction of the subject matter. 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. 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.

I'm always curious about how Lucy Worsley choses her subjects but can see the fascination with Agatha Christie - a woman who wrote mystery stories whilst remaining something of a mystery herself. I found her endearing, slightly problematic at moments, fascinating, relatable, and ultimately maintaining a bit of mystery still. Janet Morgan’s official biography of 1984 and Laura Thompson’s equally detailed but ultimately more impressionistic portrait of 2007 have both been updated and reissued; and there are numerous other analyses that try to understand how the woman who routinely described herself as a housewife became Britain’s bestselling novelist of all time.

Christie would have hated it, as she would have hated all biographies, but even so she might have saluted the skill of an author who shares her gift for supreme readability. Her bestselling books include Queen Victoria, Jane Austen at Home, A Very British Murder, If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home, Courtiers, Cavalier and four historical novels for young readers. Rising to become one of the most successful authors of all time, she was actually quite humble in her life. She debunks many myths that surround Christie’s life placing things reported of her in the culture and context in which they were written.In a 1971 study of English crime fiction, Colin Watson snickered that Christie “seems to have been well aware that intelligence and readership-potential are quite unrelated. Lucy Worsley is a brilliant detective into the letters, the emotion, the drive of Christie, the ambition. Lucy Worsley, OBE (born 18 December 1973) is an English historian, author, curator, and television presenter. 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. In 1984, she allowed author Janet Morgan to publish a biography of Agatha Christie that was thorough, fair, and scrupulous.

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. These ways of thinking about Christie are not entirely new or unfamiliar, and although Worsley has evidently done due diligence among her subject’s correspondence and personal records, there are no major revelations. It was narrated by the author, Lucy Worsley and if you know of Lucy Worsley, you know she is a wonderful, dramatic speaker. Her behaviour tells a different story, as she had very definite ideas about her novels, even down to the blurbs on the covers.In 2002 I made a brief excursion to Glasgow Museums before coming down to London as Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces in 2003. 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). Detective novels are games, and require a different method of evaluation (and construction) than works of capital-L Literature.