Lucy Worsley is simply unparalleled as a biographer who couples historical insight with riveting storytelling. fail to realise what a total man-magnet she was in her youth', or, on Archie Christie, Agatha's first and unfaithful husband: 'He was incredibly hot'. There is a lot I already new about Agatha Christie but many gaps were filled with this thorough and entertaining story of her life.

Throughout life, we tend to lose ourselves for varying reasons and have to go find the person we were. A line in the preface sets an ominous tone, warning that Christie’s work “contains views on race and class that are unacceptable today” — a common refrain in recent biographies but totally unnecessary for readers whose knowledge of history extends more than five minutes. It is quite interesting to read of the real story of a very complex woman born during a very different age.So why—despite all the evidence to the contrary—did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure? Rising to become one of the most successful authors of all time, she was actually quite humble in her life. the book is a model of how to combine biographical information, analysis and literary criticism into a propulsive narrative. To be fair, however much Worsley is on side with Christie, she doesn't shy away from recording her racial clichés and unrepentant anti-Semitism.

Having read her books on Austen and Queen Victoria I knew this would be a well written, interesting, often lighthearted look at the life of an extraordinary woman. Worsley used correspondence and other materials to create a better picture incidents and events mentioned in the autobiography, while also providing context with information about historical sentiments of the period. the author has a most engaging personality in her tv shows and it is also reflected in text as this is a worthwhile read. In “Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman,” Lucy Worsley revisits the weird story of one of the 20th century’s most popular and enduring authors. It’s rather different from anything I’ve done before,’ she explained in a pre-publication interview, ‘more serious, a tragedy really.Contains no book analyses — it occasionally regurgitates other people’s — and teems with misnomers, exaggerations and inaccuracies.

Having said that, I was interested in the author's life and her family and the book does give a good account of her life. Notebook 31, for example, has pages dated 1955,1965, then back to 1963, then ‘1965 Cont’ and then on to 1972. Page 286: But opening up the notebooks is a tantalising experience, because much of what’s in them simply doesn’t make sense.

It’s more, perhaps, that she brings a clear-eyed empathy that allows her to acknowledge Christie’s limitations and prejudices without consigning her to the silos of mass-market populist and absentee mother. In staging her life as the lady of the manor, Agatha was acting out a role just as so many of her characters did. Pour les fans d'Agatha Christie, la meilleur biographie est à mon sens celle écrite par Laura Thompson, beaucoup plus profonde et complète (quoique les explications sur les problèmes financiers d'A C, assez complexes et finalement peu intéressantes en soi, auraient pu être davantage résumées). Of Christie’s first husband, Archibald, whose adultery sparked that 1926 flight, she confides that a photograph of him impressed on her “an essential fact” that she hadn’t hitherto appreciated: “He was incredibly hot. So why – despite all the evidence to the contrary – did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure?