Never intrude yourself.”Ĭlara’s health and the need for economies dictated their next move. “The artist is only the glass through which we see nature, and the clearer and more absolutely pure that glass, so much the more perfect picture we can see through it. She could have been a professional pianist but for her excruciating shyness in front of those she did not know.īy the age of 18 she was amusing herself with writing short stories – some of which were published in much revised form in the 1930s - with family friend and author Eden Philpotts offering shrewd and constructive advice.

But Clara and Agatha found a way forward and from the age of 15 Agatha boarded at a succession of pensions and took piano and singing lessons. There were more money worries and talk of selling Ashfield.

Clara was distraught and Agatha became her mother’s closest companion.

Her father, not well since the advent of financial difficulties, died after a series of heart attacks. When she was five, the family spent some time in France having rented out the family home of Ashfield to economise, and it was here with her “governess” Marie, that Agatha learnt her idiomatic but erratically spelt French. Agatha invented imaginary friends, played with her animals, attended dance classes and began writing poems when she was still a child. While the work of the 'Queen of Crime' has been made into dozens of film, TV and stage adaptations, there hasn't been a major theatrical feature in the past 30 years since the lackluster 1985 film Ordeal by Innocence, starring Donald Sutherland and Christopher Plummer.īut now, Christie's work is seeing a resurgence thanks to a renewed effort from her estate to introduce her stories to a new generation - and reintroduce Christie as the vibrant, adventurous woman she was.Where did her creativity come from? She absorbed the children’s stories of the time - Edith Nesbit (The Story of the Treasure Seekers, The Railway Children) and Louisa M Alcott (Little Women) but also poetry and startling thrillers from America. Over her career, the iconic British writer published more than 80 novels and short stories and widely is considered the best-selling author of all time, with more than 1 billion English-language copies and another billion in 44 foreign languages sold worldwide. It has been almost 100 years since Agatha Christie put pen to paper for her very first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

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