{"id":40389,"date":"2026-03-15T23:08:32","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T23:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/agatha-christies-great-grandson-names-writers-most-neglected-character-books-entertainment\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T23:08:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T23:08:32","slug":"agatha-christies-great-grandson-names-writers-most-neglected-character-books-entertainment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/agatha-christies-great-grandson-names-writers-most-neglected-character-books-entertainment\/","title":{"rendered":"Agatha Christie’s great-grandson names writer’s most ‘neglected’ character | Books | Entertainment"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\"Olivia<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

Olivia Colman and Dame Judi Dench in Murder On The Orient Express (Image: PA\/Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp\/Nicola Dove)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Fifty years after Dame Agatha Christie\u2019s death, the world still can\u2019t get enough of her brilliance. The Queen of Crime\u2019s Seven Dials Mystery on Netflix, starring Mia McKenna-Bruce, has been a ratings hit, a Miss Marple reboot is in the works and her award-winning play, The Mousetrap, remains a West End hit 73 years after its debut. None of this surprises the writer\u2019s great-grandson, James Prichard, who became chairman and chief executive of her estate in 2010. \u201cWe\u2019re probably selling more books now than we have for a very long time,\u201d he chuckles with obvious delight.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The super-prolific Christie wrote 66 detective novels, 150 short stories and more than 20 plays during her lifetime. She is often cited as the third-most-published author in the world \u2013 behind only Shakespeare and the Bible. And her work has stood the test of time. \u201cBecause it\u2019s only 50 years ago she died, it proves how modern a writer and a woman she was,\u201d says James, 55. \u201cShe was still writing at the beginning of the seventies.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He was only five when his great-grandmother died. He can remember visiting her at home but his memories come into greater focus on the day of her death in January 1976. \u201cI remember my father [Mathew, Christie\u2019s only grandchild] being in deep mourning but I also remember that it was the lead item on the Six O\u2019clock News,\u201d he recalls. \u201cThat was the moment I realised it wasn\u2019t normal to have your great-grandmother’s death on the news.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Helena<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

Helena Bonham Carter and Mia McKenna-Bruce in The Seven Dials Mystery (Image: Simon Ridgway\/Netflix)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Read more:<\/strong> ITVX is playing ‘best ever’ Agatha Christie drama that’s ‘just like book’ <\/a><\/p>\n

Read more:<\/strong> I visited historic hotel which inspired Agatha Christie\u2019s most iconic novel <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Today James sees her as two women. \u201cThere\u2019s Agatha Christie, the icon, and then there is Nima, which my father called her, the family member,\u201d he explains. \u201cShe was an amazing parent and grandparent, and she really loved to be around those people.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Despite attaining huge fame during her lifetime, Christie remains something of an enigma. Born into a prosperous family in Torquay, Devon, she was homeschooled by her father, Frederick, for much of her childhood and taught herself to read by the age of five. With two much older siblings away from home, she learned to entertain herself. “I found myself making up stories and acting the different parts, and there’s nothing like boredom to make you write,\u201d she remarked in later life. \u201cSo by the time I was 16 or 17, I’d written quite a number of short stories and one long, dreary novel.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Christie\u2019s first published book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, arrived in 1920 and introduced the character of Hercule Poirot. From then on, she became the master \u2013 or should that be mistress? \u2013 of the murder mystery.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Her super power was listening, according to James. \u201cMy father always said she was the best listener she ever met. She was a very shy person, she wasn\u2019t the life of the party. One of the tips she gave aspiring writers was to ride around on the bus and just listen to conversations. If she were sitting in a cafe, she would be slightly listening to the conversation on the table next door, and she would take names from that as well. She frequently took note of people\u2019s names and noted them down for use later on.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In fact, when it came to crafting her ingenious plots, Christie didn\u2019t particularly worry about the actual writing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI would call my great-grandmother a genius, and with a genius, the rules don\u2019t apply,\u201d says James. \u201cShe had this extraordinary brain in her head. We have her notebooks, but she didn\u2019t plan in the way that I think most modern writers would plan. There aren\u2019t reams of what the story would look like \u2013 there are scribbles, but she did most of it in her head. She compared the process of writing to giving birth. There was a period in her head when all of these things were muddling around, and then at some point, it was ready, and she sat down, and she wrote it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cSome of them came out very quickly. She wrote manically, certainly two, possibly three, even four books a year at her peak, but she didn\u2019t have to do interviews or social media or events. So, she had the time between writing her books to have a very private life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"James<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

James Prichard, great grandson of Agatha Christie and chairman and CEO of her estate (Image: James Prichard)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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\"Agatha<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

Agatha Christie was a keen traveller in her youth (Image: The Christie Archive Trust)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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While Christie drew inspiration from real life people, she lifted snippets of information only. \u201cVery rarely did she take someone she knew and literally put them on the page,\u201d continues James. \u201cWhat she did more frequently was take bits of people she knew and blend them into a character. It was more like patchwork.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He considers the fastidious Belgian detective \u2013 arguably her greatest creation. \u201cI don\u2019t know where Poirot came from, but there\u2019s a story of her seeing Belgian refugees by the side of a bus stop in Torquay, and that\u2019s probably true, but exactly where that particular person came from was really in her head,\u201d he says. \u201cThere is an element of Miss Marple that\u2019s her, that\u2019s her mother and that\u2019s her grandmother. She always claimed it\u2019s not her, but I suspect there\u2019s an element that\u2019s her.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Despite being her most famous detective, Christie expressed her dislike for the moustached detective frequently over the years. Today, James waves this away as fickleness. \u201cThere are quotes from her talking about her frustration with Poirot at various times, but if you spoke to any writer, they\u2019d say they get frustrated with returning characters at some point.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov, David Suchet, John Malkovich and Kenneth Branagh have all played Poirot but James diplomatically declines to name a favourite. \u201cYou\u2019re not allowed to have a favourite child, and you\u2019re not allowed to have a favourite Poirot or Marple,\u201d he chuckles. \u201cThere have been extraordinary actors who have played Poirot over time; they all did it in their own way, and that\u2019s what\u2019s so special about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"David<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

David Suchet is the actor most famously associated with the role of Hercule Poirot (Image: ITV)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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If he does have a niggle it\u2019s that perhaps Poirot has had too much screen time in comparison with another of Christie\u2019s all-time greats, spinster sleuth Miss Marple.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI hope to do something extraordinary with Miss Marple,\u201d he says of plans for a new film about her. “We haven’t done anything with Miss Marple for a long time and I always feel like Miss Marple gets slightly neglected and falls behind Poirot.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Modern adaptations of Christie productions have been accused of being too \u201cwoke\u201d, and fixated with multicultural casting or superimposed storylines about racism or anti-colonialism. The BBC<\/a> was recently urged to abandon \u201ctick box\u201d diversity when it comes to casting parts, following an independent review commissioned by the public broadcaster.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Former Bafta chair Anne Morrison and ex-Ofcom executive Chris Banatvala\u2019s report criticised a 2023 Agatha Christie adaptation of Murder Is Easy, which featured a black lead actor, David Jonsson, as Luke Obiako Fitzwilliam.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Prichard rejects the report and believes the adaptation \u201cworked\u201d. Speaking recently, he said: \u201cI believe \u2013 and I believe my great-grandmother believed, because she did this herself when she adapted her stories into plays \u2013 that to adapt something into a different medium you have to make changes to that original story. We are categorically using her stories and relying on her genius but it\u2019s moved on. We\u2019re not doing literal translations of her books for TV. We are making period drama but we are looking through a modern sensibility.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If he has any quibbles about public misconceptions, these relate only to Christie herself. His major bugbear is the use of older pictures which he believes identifies his great-grandmother as an eternal Miss Marple figure. \u201cShe was a young woman once, and she was an incredibly adventurous and spirited young woman who travelled extensively, did extraordinary things, and one of them was singing,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Christie was musical from a young age and once aspired to become an opera singer. \u201cBut that\u2019s where the shyness caused an issue \u2013 performing became a problem,\u201d James adds. \u201cBut she played the piano and sang privately and for fun all through her life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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During both world wars, Christie abandoned her writing to help the national effort. In the First World War, she volunteered as a nurse. \u201cIt was presumably quite a traumatic experience where she regularly saw fairly unpleasant things,\u201d reflects James. \u201cBut she became a pharmacist and learned about drugs and medicines, which crept into her writing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Mia<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

Mia McKenna-Bruce stars as Lady Eileen ‘Bundle’ Brent in Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials on Netflix (Image: Netflix)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Christie\u2019s passion for travelling made it onto her pages too. In 1922, she and first husband, Archie, embarked on a 10-month grand tour of the British Empire. During their retreat, Agatha learnt and perfected the craft of surfing, and is widely believed to be the first Western woman to learn to surf standing up in South Africa.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Her experience is thought to have inspired the book, The Man in the Brown Suit, which features a protagonist who travels to South Africa who tries \u2013 and fails \u2013 to surf. After marrying her second husband, Max Mallowan, she spent months every year living in the Middle East on excavation sites as a keen archaeologist.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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During her annual retreats, she became a regular on the Orient Express, which travelled between London and Baghdad. Her now-infamous book, Murder on the Orient Express, was inspired by a real-life incident in which her train was stuck in a blizzard for 24 hours.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She also drew similar inspiration for her books Death on the Nile, Murder in Mesopotamia, and Appointment with Death.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Christie, who died aged 85 in January 1976, continued to work into her twilight years. Age incredibly never dulled her talent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cShe wrote longhand, and when she couldn\u2019t write anymore later in life, she dictated her books,\u201d says James. \u201cWe have tape recordings of her and it sounds like she\u2019s reading, but she\u2019s writing. She had this amazing brain and mind until the end.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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Olivia Colman and Dame Judi Dench in Murder On The Orient Express (Image: PA\/Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp\/Nicola Dove) Fifty years after Dame Agatha Christie\u2019s death, the world still can\u2019t… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40391,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1023],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40389"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}