British Library
£25
During her 85 years on earth, Agatha Christie published a whopping 66 murder mystery novels, more than 20 original plays and 14 short story collections. Alongside this, she managed to become an expert in pharmacy, an archaeology whiz and a surfing trailblazer. Her enormous success continues today; last year, Christie’s books sold more than 200,000 copies in the UK.
Marking 50 years since the author died in 1976, the British Library has staged a blockbuster exhibition all about Christie’s life and writing. This show is absolutely mahoosive. It takes visitors from Christie’s birth up to her death, covering every major season of her life along the way. A World of Mystery travels through Christie’s different eras, bringing each of them to life through vibrant, immersive and interactive displays. Visitors move through a floral wallpapered country house, a clinical chemist’s dispensary, a charming carriage on the Orient Express, a sandy archaeological dig and a glitzy West End theatre, each section telling them something different about Christie’s life, and how these experiences and adventures informed her writing.
As you’d expect from a British Library exhibition, there are a lot of books on display here. But there are also plenty of photographs, pieces of clothing, objects from Christie’s home, and artefacts uncovered during her time accompanying her second husband – archaeologist Max Mallowan – on digs in the Middle East.
The British Library does a good job of painting a well-rounded portrait of the author as a writer, daughter, wife and adventurer. Early rooms tell us Christie was a shy child. Ten years younger than her closest-in-age sibling, she lived in her imagination and her books. She was first published in print when she was 14 – a poem about steam vs electric trains. There are also early notebooks, manuscripts from never-published novels, letters to family members and Christie’s typewriter from 1937.
It’s hard to understate Christie’s influence on the murder mystery
The dispensary section is particularly riveting, explaining how Christie’s stint in the pharmacy in WWI allowed her to become an expert in all manner of poisons – a common murder weapon in her books. One 1977 newspaper clipping reveals how Christie’s 1961 novel The Pale Horse, depicting a murder with thallium, helped a nurse save a child’s life – reading the book allowed her to identify the symptoms of thallium poisoning.
It’s hard to understate Christie’s influence on the murder mystery, and video interviews with authors like Jeremy Vine and Lucy Foley, A World of Mystery make sure we understand why. She is the reason we have hugely popular film, book and games franchises like Knives Out, The Thursday Murder Club and Cluedo. Even The Traitors, with its backstabbing and secret killing, gets a shout-out in the exhibition. Christie invented the cosy crime genre with Miss Marple, the drawing-room reveal with The Mysterious Affair at Styles and the isolated island murder with And Then There Were None.
The curation, led by Lucy Rowland, leaves almost no stone unturned. It explains Christie’s mysterious 11-day disappearance in 1926 – she checked into a hotel under the name of her first husband’s mistress after discovering their affair – and acknowledges the use of racial slurs in her writing, although this feels more surface-level than a deep delve into the issues. It also doesn’t interrogate the colonial ideas in Christie’s work, particularly the books written during her time in the Middle East.
But even if you aren’t a Christie superfan – although plenty of them will be heading to this show – you’ll find a goldmine of fascinating bits to be discovered. Far from being a stuffy library exhibition, there is enough inside these rooms to keep you entertained for hours. Wannabe Poirots can try their hand at solving their own mystery, with clues hidden around the exhibition. Interactive displays tell you how likely you are to be murdered in a Christie novel (very likely, I’m told. Gulp!), or let you create your own whodunnit newspaper spread.
Ultimately, Christie comes across as an extraordinary woman with an immense imagination. This vast and dense display does her magnificent career justice, and will certainly have you reaching for one of Christie’s many, many novels. All hail the Queen of Crime, long may her work live.
