This is full of open spoilers from Christie's books so if you haven't read them yet, you might want to avoid this. Where Worsley excels is in her descriptions of Christie’s day-to-day life; we hear virtually nothing of her political opinions as she lives through two world wars, for example, but we do glean a sense of her exceptionalism in the news that she consistently ignored air-raid sirens and simply turned over in bed. In staging her life as the lady of the manor, Agatha was acting out a role just as so many of her characters did. This is a well-written biography that takes the bad (racism, anti-semitism) with the good (Christie as an unappreciated author and dramatist).

Throughout her life, AC manages to keep fairly up to date, setting her books in a contemporary world (from the 1920s to the 1970s) and showing the changes in her glimpse of privilege throughout the decades. On the third day, she even failed to go to her work at the hospital, ‘because I did not dare leave my book . So why—despite all the evidence to the contrary—did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure?She was willing to pretend that she was a regular citizen, not a celebrated author, a ridiculous proposition. With great affection, Worsley masterfully maneuvers her way through Christie’s life and prolific oeuvre. Fans will admire Worsley’s identification of real-life people, places and phrases that Christie upcycled into her fiction.

lucy_worsley, a historian, documentarian + presenter, and Joint Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces in the UK (coolest jobs ever). She saw both World Wars and the ensuing social, economic, and psychologic aftermath for the British people and West Asia (during her travels there).So why—despite all the evidence to the contrary—did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure? The chapter about her disappearance is probably the most interesting part, as it goes into more detail than other accounts I have read. In recent years, she has become the subject of a number of books, all based on her 11 day disappearance in 1926. 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.

I think her reluctance to claim her rightful recognition has contributed to her relegation by the literature snobs to ‘merely' genre fiction. Lucy Worsley is simply unparalleled as a biographer who couples historical insight with riveting storytelling. Page 345: It was a lifelong intellectual conversation between two questing minds, with companionship at its heart.

So I say…read the autobiography, which is truthfully more revelatory and amusing than Worsley’s pull quotes. Annoyingly glib, pop-trendy, staggeringly superficial, sensationalist, fanciful and frequently silly. Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was 'just' an ordinary housewife, when clearly she wasn't?