Fascinating, seductive, incisive, this beautiful exploration into Christie, her life and times, is full of unique insight, eye opening detail, sharp analysis. I loved listening to this highly entertaining account of Christie from Lucy Worsley on the train rides through the Alps. There have been at least a dozen books devoted to Christie in the past two decades, and Lucy Worsley’s “Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman” is a pleasant but inessential addition to the stack.

C'est très frustrant, car étant donné l'épaisseur du livre je m'attendais à un travail plus fouillé et original. Morgan described her own impression of Christie as ‘strange, manipulative, fertile in thinking of ways to murder and trick,’ but a closer acquaintance with the evidence changed her mind. Her bestselling books include Queen Victoria; Jane Austen at Home; The Art of the English Murder; and If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home. I've got a spotty memory so odds are, I'll have forgotten what the spoilers Worsley reveals are by the time I get to reading all the Christie novels. You might also catch me presenting history films on the old goggle box, giving the talks on the cruise ship Queen Mary 2, or slurping cocktails.Poirot or with the calm curiosity of Miss Marple, or even incisive and daring couples like Tommy and Tuppence; we just need to read her .

I'm not usually a big fan of biography, but Lucy Worsley brings such a delightful energy to her work that I couldn't resist. What I appreciated in reading this book is the fact that Worsley's writing is rather conversational. There will not now need to be another biography of the queen of the detective story written for decades. Detective novels are games, and require a different method of evaluation (and construction) than works of capital-L Literature.

Dr Lucy Worsley is Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, the charity which looks after the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace, and other historic places. Page 316: One of the advantages of being seventy is that you really don’t care any longer what anyone says about you.

Throughout life, we tend to lose ourselves for varying reasons and have to go find the person we were. To me (and I am by no means an expert) a good biography is an honest and stark depiction of the subject matter. Its exuberance captures the joyful, lively Agatha who hid her joyful liveliness from people she didn’t know well.the book is a model of how to combine biographical information, analysis and literary criticism into a propulsive narrative.

Someone once said that the greatest character Agatha Christie ever invented was Agatha Christie herself. She succeeds brilliantly, for the Agatha Chirstie (woman and author) that emerges from this astute and, at times, justifiably compassionate book is anything but cosy.I found her endearing, slightly problematic at moments, fascinating, relatable, and ultimately maintaining a bit of mystery still. Her behaviour tells a different story, as she had very definite ideas about her novels, even down to the blurbs on the covers. I learned lots of facts about Agatha Christie and enjoyed the almost novel-like feel if this biography. A superlative biography of the Queen of Crime from one of our most noted historians, Worsley's page-turning volume emphasises not just Christie's unique gifts as a storyteller but her pioneering qualities as a determined, successful and thoroughly modern woman.