num_pages: 498
description: A new fascinating account of the life of Agatha Christie from celebrated literary and cultural historian Lucy Worsley.Nobody in the world was more inadequate to act the heroine than I was. Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was just an ordinary housewife when clearly she wasnt? Her life is fascinating for its mysteries and its passions and as Lucy Worsley says She was thrillingly scintillatingly modern. She went surfing in Hawaii she loved fast cars and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology which helped her through devastating mental illness. So whydespite all the evidence to the contrarydid Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure? She was born in 1890 into a world that had its own rules about what women could and couldnt do. Lucy Worsleys biography is not just of a massively internationally successful writer. It's also the story of a person who despite the obstacles of class and gender became an astonishingly successful working woman. With access to personal letters and papers that have rarely been seen Lucy Worsleys biography is both authoritative and entertaining and makes us realize what an extraordinary pioneer Agatha Christie wastruly a woman who wrote the twentieth century.
language: English
title: Agatha Christie: Radio 4 Book of the Week
publisher: Hodder & Stoughton