Book jacket blurb:
Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending she was ‘just’ an ordinary housewife, when clearly she wasn’t? As Lucy Worsley says, ‘She was thrillingly, scintillatingly modern’. She went surfing in Hawaii, she loved fast cars, and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology, which helped her through devastating mental illness.
She why – despite all the evidence to the contrary – did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure?
She was born in 1890 into a world which had its own rules about what women could and couldn’t do. Lucy Worsley’s biography is not just of an internationally renowned bestselling writer. It’s also the story of a person who, despite the obstacles of class and gender became an astonishingly successful working woman.
Opinion:
An Amazon parcel arrived on my doorstep, and while I am on first name terms with the Amazon driver, I hadn’t actually ordered anything. This surprise delivery contained a gift from my sister, a hardback copy of this book – my favourite historian writing about my favourite mystery author. What’s not to love?!
As discerning G&J readers, you deserve a little more than that for a book review. I’m sure you’ve all seen Lucy Worsley on TV, as joint Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces she writes and presents on a host of historic topics. Her writing style is engaging and easy to read, conveying information in a way that’s understandable for us non-Historians. I recommend anything written by her, but as you can probably tell, I’m a fan so probably a little biased.
This book reads part biography, part history of the early 20th century, taking Agatha from her birth in 1890 to her death in 1970. We see how her love of stories came from spending hours on her own in the library because her mother didn’t agree with formal education for girls and how her volunteering at a hospital during the First World War led to a job in the pharmacy and a fascination with poisons in her novels. Worsley tells us about the incident where Agatha disappeared from Newlands Corner in Surrey (near where the amazing Silent Pool gin is made) and reappeared in the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, sharing her opinion on why, but making the reader clear we may never know the full reason.
Even after reading this book, I know more about what happened in Agatha’s life but little about how she felt about it. She seems to be a woman rather diffident of her achievements, considering her writing to be something squeezed around her other activities, yet something she knows will pay the bills. Agatha still remains an elusive woman, but this was a fabulous read. I hope you enjoy it too.
- Historical
- Biography
- Fascinating
