Whitehaven Mansions Whitehaven Mansions Whitehaven Mansions Whitehaven Mansions A popular question asked at Hercule Poirot Central is: where in London is Whitehaven Mansions, Hercule Poirot's home as seen on the television series "Poirot"? Such a question deserves an article, c'est vrai. It is found on Charterhouse Square in London. Many buildings surround the square, but the residential building known as Florin Court (known as Poirot's "Whitehaven Mansions") is located on the eastern side of a park there. Finished in 1936, the building houses a swimming pool in the basement and a roof garden (as seen on satellite images). Florin Court (and Charterhouse Square) is just north of the Museum of London (at London Wall). The Museum of London's postcode is EC2Y 5HN, whereas it is known that Charterhouse Square's postcode is EC1. For visitors not familiar to London, Charterhouse Square is just west of Goswell Road/Aldersgate Street and one block north of Beech Street. One can always go to Holborn Circus, and from there take Charterhouse Street in a northeast direction up to the Square.

Another thing: if you're near the Barbican Centre, home of the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Shakespeare Company, you know you're close. The Barbican Centre is adjacent to the Museum of London. There are some excellent photos of Florin Court (and Charterhouse Square) on the flickr site . The following satellite images below are taken from Google Earth. I have labeled a few places for idea of proximity/location. To enlarge a picture below, simply click on it. All original content © 2016, Hercule Poirot Central. This site is not endorsed by Agatha Christie Ltd. or the Acorn Media Group. 10 fictional character addresses in London – 2. ‘Whitehaven Mansions’… | Exploring London A blog about London and its history… 10 fictional character addresses in London – 2. ‘Whitehaven Mansions’… October 30, 2013 Since we’re talking about the homes of detectives, we’ll continue on that trend with a look at the home of Agatha Christie’s creation Hercule Poirot as it appears in the TV series of the same name (now in its 13th and final season).

The Belgian-born detective, who featured in some 33 novels and 65 short stories, rose to the rank of the police chief of the city Brussels before the outbreak of World War I forced him to leave his home for England. There he met up with his friend Captain Arthur Hastings – they had apparently previously met – and undertakes some government work before eventually embarking upon his new career as a private detective. He subsequently moves into an art deco flat which becomes his workplace and home at 56B Whitehavens Mansions (he apparently chose the building based on its symmetry). In the TV show, the art deco block chosen to represent this building is the Grade II-listed Florin Court, located on the eastern side of Charterhouse Square in Smithfield. Actually built in 1936 – well after Poirot apparently moved in – the nine floor building has a curvaceous facade and boasts some 120 flats along with a basement swimming pool and rooftop garden. Interestingly, last July there was a fire in a first floor flat causing the entire building to be evacuated.

Poirot apparently lived in a couple of different apartments in the building and was also known at times to reside in The Savoy Hotel and The Park Lane Hotel. PICTURE: Goodwillgames/Wikimedia Commons Heavenly Worldliness: 10 Fictional Addresses of 10 Fictional Detectives CHBC Sermons Bonhoeffer uses a similar phrase 'worldly Christianity'. It's J Gresham Machen that I want to line up most closely with. See his Christianity and culture here . Having done commentaries on Proverbs (Heavenly Wisdom) and Song of Songs (Heavenly Love), a matching title for Ecclesiastes would be Heavenly Worldliness. For my stance on worldliness, see 3 posts here . 10 Fictional Addresses of 10 Fictional Detectives 1. Sherlock Holmes, 221B Baker St, London W1, England (Arthur Conan Doyle) 2. Hercule Poirot, 56B Whitehaven Mansions, Sandhurst Square, London W1, England (Agatha Christie) 3. Miss Marple, Danemead, High Street, St Mary Mead, England (Agatha Christie) 4.

Jules Maigret, 132 Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, Paris, France (Georges Simenon) 5. Sam Spade, 891 Post St, San Franciso, CA, USA (Dashiell Hammett) 6. Philip Marlowe, #615 Cahuenga Bldg, Hollywood Blvd, LA CA, USA (Raymond Chandler) 7. John Rebus, 17 Arden Street, St Leonards, Edinburgh, Scotland (Ian Rankin) 8. Lord Peter Wimsey, 110A Piccadilly, London W1 and Bredon Hall, Duke's Denver, Norfolk, England (Dorothy L Sayers) 9. Brother Cadfael, Shrewsbury Abbey, Shrewsbury, Salop, England (Ellis Peters) 10. Albert Campion, 17a Bottle St, Piccadilly, London W1, England (Marjorie Allingham) : Poirot's Age Poirot's Age Poirot's Age Poirot's Age Deciding on the age of Hercule Poirot can be a little tricky.

Some say he lives to 125 by the time of his last novel (found in various reference books and amongst Agatha Christie scholars/experts). Christie said in her An Autobiography (finished in 1965): "What a terrible mistake I had made in starting with Hercule Poirot so old--I ought to have abandoned him after the first three or four books, and begun again with someone much younger" (italicized "old" was included in text). She also made a mistake, she said, with making Poirot a retired police offer. She also says in her autobiography: "Not too young a one. What a mistake I made there. The result is that my fictional detective must really be well over a hundred by now." Indeed Hercule Poirot was! Let's discuss his age a little further. In Three Act Tragedy, Poirot said he was to retire from the Belgian police force at the time WWI began. That meant if the age of sixty was for retirement, then Poirot would have been born around 1854.

That meant Poirot was a refugee in England at age 62 roughly (in the year 1916) when Arthur Hastings saw him at Styles. During the period of his "retirement" (if he even did retire), the first World War was being waged. Did Poirot get sidetracked, perhaps brought into the resistance? That is the question Anne Hart poses in her book The Life and Times of Hercule Poirot. As recounted in the Poirot novel Murder on the Orient Express, Poirot owed gratitude to a French general for saving his life. The General had mentioned again to the detective "of France, of Belgium, of glory, of honor", but stops just short of mentioning World War I. Was Hercule a resistance fighter, having escaped to France? King Albert I of Belgium himself in the short story "The Kidnapped Prime Minister" recommended Poirot's services: capable of saving a missing prime minister from the enemy. Is it possible that Poirot provided services for the Belgian throne before? Maybe Poirot gained incredible skills in the resistance, not just in the police force. This is, of course, harmless hypothesis.

If this were all true, then how exhausting it would have been for our Belgian sleuth! That would make sense for his desire to retire before The Murder of Roger Ackroyd when he was 72 (in 1926, when the story was published). He vowed to retire after his "Twelve Labors" (the stories were published in 1939-1940, but collected in 1947). He was already aged 93 then! Poirot clearly went into semi-retirement, taking only cases that intrigued him. That would have him aged 121 when he appears in his last story Curtain (published 1975). Christie was careful to age Poirot slowly (she was wise to!). She didn't know when Curtain was to be published (it had been in a vault for some 30+ years). Norma Restarick in Third Girl (1966) changes her mind about speaking to Poirot because she found him to be "too old". Indeed!

In the 1969 novel Hallowe'en Party, Poirot admitted to ex-policeman Spence that they were "both old men"; however, Poirot confessed that he still dyed his hair black! Agatha Christie met two necessities in choosing Poirot to dye his hair black every now and then: 1) it continued to keep the characterization and vanity of the character and 2) it aged Poirot slower in years because he didn't display gray hair. Further Calculations In the book The Agatha Christie Companion, Sanders and Lovallo say one could use an "age formula" to determine Poirot's age. They say Christie employed a 3 to 2 ratio in her books, meaning that Poirot ages about 2 years for every 3 calendar years. I calculate then that if Poirot was 62 in 1916, when he came across the English Channel, he would've been 101 (so young!) at the time of Curtain. My calculation only assumes if the counting started from 1916 (when The Mysterious Affair at Styles was written).

The authors of The Agatha Christie Companion say this same 3:2 ratio/method can be applied to Poirot's friend Captain Arthur Hastings as well. Calculating Hastings' age, they said, would make him in his 60s in Curtain. Hastings clearly states in The Mysterious Affair at Styles that he was 30 years old. That was 1916. So . . . if I started calculating at 1916 and I assigned him the age of 30, his calculated age would be 69 for the novel Curtain. I'm so at peace with this. I always pictured Hastings in his 30s when he first narrated Poirot's cases. I always felt that a difference of at least 30 years were between him and his friend Poirot, too. All original content © 2016, Hercule Poirot Central. This site is not endorsed by Agatha Christie Ltd. or the Acorn Media Group. Whitehaven Mansions | Exploring London 10 fictional character addresses in London – 2.

‘Whitehaven Mansions’… October 30, 2013 Since we’re talking about the homes of detectives, we’ll continue on that trend with a look at the home of Agatha Christie’s creation Hercule Poirot as it appears in the TV series of the same name (now in its 13th and final season). The Belgian-born detective, who featured in some 33 novels and 65 short stories, rose to the rank of the police chief of the city Brussels before the outbreak of World War I forced him to leave his home for England. There he met up with his friend Captain Arthur Hastings – they had apparently previously met – and undertakes some government work before eventually embarking upon his new career as a private detective. He subsequently moves into an art deco flat which becomes his workplace and home at 56B Whitehavens Mansions (he apparently chose the building based on its symmetry). In the TV show, the art deco block chosen to represent this building is the Grade II-listed Florin Court, located on the eastern side of Charterhouse Square in Smithfield.

Actually built in 1936 – well after Poirot apparently moved in – the nine floor building has a curvaceous facade and boasts some 120 flats along with a basement swimming pool and rooftop garden. Interestingly, last July there was a fire in a first floor flat causing the entire building to be evacuated. Poirot apparently lived in a couple of different apartments in the building and was also known at times to reside in The Savoy Hotel and The Park Lane Hotel. PICTURE: Goodwillgames/Wikimedia Commons 10 Historic London Garden Squares…10. Charterhouse Square… July 3, 2013 The final in our series on historic garden squares in London (for this year, anyway), we’re taking a look at Charterhouse Square. The five sided square, located just to the east of Smithfield, takes its name from a Carthusian monastery which was established in 1371 on what is now its north side.

Prior to this, what is now the square had from 1348 served as a location for a plaque burial pit (a number of skeletons from the plaque pit have been unearthed as part of the Crossrail project – for our earlier story on this, follow this link ). The monastery was dissolved in 1537 after the monk’s refused to recognise King Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy (some were later executed at Tyburn) and it was subsequently transformed into a manor house with Thomas Howard, the 4th Duke of Norfolk, among its residents over the years (in fact he was imprisoned there around 1570 for allegedly plotting to marry Mary, Queen of Scots – he was later executed by Queen Elizabeth I for treason). Under the will of Thomas Sutton, an almshouse and school was subsequently established on the site – the almshouse remains there while the school, whose students had included Methodism founder John Wesley and writer William Makepeace Thackeray, moved out to Godalming in Surrey in 1872. As well as the almshouse (which is open for guided tours, check this site for details), some of the buildings are now occupied by medical related institutions.

In the 1600s, the square was also home to numerous other large residences among them Rutland House, which had been the residence of the Venetian ambassador. It lost its aristocratic inhabitants in the ensuing centuries but remained mainly residential up until the late 19th century when it gradually became taken over by businesses and other organisations. Interesting to note is that the east side of the square is still home to the residential unit complex known as Florin Court, better known as Whitehaven Mansions , the home of Hercule Poirot in the TV series which bears his name. The area of the garden square itself was variously referred to as the Charterhouse Churchyard, the Charterhouse Yard and Charterhouse Close over the years and has gone through numerous incarnations with efforts to improve and formalise its look dating back to at least the 16th century. It was at least partly enclosed by the late 1600s and the fences replaced several times, notably in 1742 when an Act of Parliament was passed allowing residents to fine those who entered without authorisation. The enclosing fences have since been modified several more times.

One of the major changes to the shape of the square occurred in 1860 when the Metropolitan Railway was extended between Farringdon and Moorgate. It was at this time that the road surface which surrounds the central garden, which has a Grade II heritage listing, was laid down. Today the gardens in the centre of the square remain under the management of the Charterhouse (and hence aren’t open to the general public except on tours) but even without a tour it’s still a quiet place to walk around the outside of, evoking a strong sense of years gone past. Share this: Whitehaven Mansions Whitehaven Mansions Whitehaven Mansions Photo by MCG 2013 Hercule Poirot, throughout his career, lived at 56b Whitehaven Mansions. The location for Whitehaven Manions in Agatha Christie's Poirot is Florin Court, Charterhouse Square, London. Here is a grand tour of the world's greatest detective's flat. Video by MCG 2013.

02-03-2016 by Peter Kierans (page 10) - issuu Pete Treanor’s Weekly Quiz 1 Britain A Novacastrian is a native of what English city? 2 The Bible What is the second book of the Old Testament? 3 Children’s Books What book later a film about a very unique car, did Ian Fleming write for his son? 4 Europe The Oresund Bridge connects what two European countries? 5 Movies The disaster movie ‘The Towering Inferno’ was set in what American city? 6 Sport Which is the only city in Belgium to host the summer Olympic Games? 7 Rock and Pop Which famous record label was founded in Detroit in 1959 by Berry Gordy Jr in 1959? 8 Local In 1960, local man Damian Callan became the first winner of what now national sports competition? 9 Musicals The long running west end show ‘Miss Saignon’ is based on what opera? 10 Books Which fictional detective lived at 56B Whitehaven Mansions? The Stinker Which 1990 movie ends with the line ‘Kevin, what did you do in my room?

—this week’s answers— Dundalk Leader 2nd March 2016 Biodiversity Green Flag for St Vincent’s By Paul Byrne Having picked up four green flags in recent years St Vincent’s Secondary School are working hard to make it five as they embrace this year’s theme of ‘Biodiversity’. Green-Schools, known internationally as Eco-Schools, is an international environmental education programme, environmental management system and award scheme that promotes and acknowledges long-term, whole school action for the environment. The girls in St Vincent’s have a rich history in the green schools project having been awarded four green flags in Ms Kerry Moran, Denise Walsh, Rachel Lowry and Aoife Begley recent years, more than any other school in Dundalk. This year the Green School’s Committee are focusing on biodiversity in the school and their slogan “Don’t let species go extinct, in this world we are all linked ” was selected as it felt that this best reflected the work that they have undertaken to date. In an effort to attract a more diverse range of fauna into the area a number of initiatives have been spearheaded by the committee and TY students, including the planting of new flower beds around the school grounds.

Kerry Moran, teacher in St Vincent’s, says that the students have been working hard in recent months as they try and secure the school’s fifth green flag. “Our involvement in the Green Schools Programme over recent years has created a culture of environmental awareness throughout St Vincent’s. We are currently working hard as we hope to be awarded a fifth green flag later on in the year” explained Kerry. “The students have planted flowerbeds here in the school garden which include vegetables and flowers in the school ground in the hope of attracting new species of insects. They have also participated in an ecology field study of a local park in an effort to identify our local flora and fauna,” she added. The overall aim of the Biodiversity theme is for schools to increase awareness of the importance of biodiversity and for students and staff to come up with ways in which we can help biodiversity. This can be achieved through improving or preserving your local biodiversity whether it is in your school garden or at home. Talk on revolutionary accounts Afternoon tea in aid of MND Newly available personal accounts of revolutionary events in Louth and south Armagh will provide the focus of an upcoming historical event at Annagassan. These accounts were recorded by Rev.

Louis O’Kane, who served as a priest in Togher from 1936 to 1940, and went all over Ulster and beyond in the 1960s and 1970s on a mission to preserve the authentic voices of former Irish Volunteers for posterity. This event will first exam- ine the life of Rev. O’Kane (1905-73), his County Derry origins and Louth connections. It will outline how the presence of a tape-recorder in 1958 kick-started his project to capture the memories of men and women of the Irish revolutionary period. By the time of his death, O’Kane had recorded more than 100 interviews. The event, ‘Rev. Louis O’Kane and his Tapes of Irish Volunteers from Co. Louth’, is being run in conjunction with the Annagas- san and Dunleer Historical societies. It will feature talks by the Ó Fiaich Library Outreach Officer, Dónal McAnallen, and local historian Bryan Rogers, at the History Loft, Annagassan on Wednesday 9 March at 7.30 pm.

Admission is free and light refreshments will be provided. There is no booking process, though patrons are advised to arrive early. Enquiries can be made to 048-37522981 or dmcanallen@mail.com. As we get older, many of us start to suffer with mobility problems. Everyday things we used to take for granted, like walking up the stairs, can become an issue. If you are finding it more and more difficult to walk from your living room to your upstairs bedroom or bathroom, help is at hand in the form of a stairlift. Stairlift Solutions, have been selling, installing and servicing stairlifts for over 15 years across Northern Ireland and all the border counties. As a locally owned family run business, Stairlift Solutions prides itself on a helpful and friendly service, always going that extra mile for all their customers - both new and old alike. Whether it’s straight or curved, indoor or outdoor, they can offer new, reconditioned and rental of stairlifts and can even have them installed within 24 hours if needed. They also fully maintain the stairlifts with extended warranty available for total peace of mind.

Here is what just one of their many satisfied customers had to say: “Many thanks for all your help with this, Mum is so happy to be able to go upstairs and have normal use of her home again! We look Four 3rd Year BA in Event Management students from DkIT are hosting a “1916 Afternoon Tea” on Tuesday March 8 at 3pm. The event will take place in DkIT’s Hospitality Training Restaurant, with all proceeds on the day going to the Irish Motor Neurone Disease Association. The theme of this event is “A Taste of Irish Culture” and this will be explored through the refreshments served, guest speakers attending and entertainment provided. Event Coordinator, Rachel forward to the subsequent improvement this will mean in relation to her health and well-being.” Claire Lemon Bessbrook “Thank you all for a very good job on providing me with comfortable access to all of my home.

Right from Curran stated that: “This is a very unique event and, my fellow colleagues and I decided that it would create a wonderful opportunity to fundraise for the IMNDA cause while celebrating Irish culture.” Tickets cost €10 and can be purchased by contacting Christina on 0858456941 or by emailing dkit1916afternoontea@ gmail.com. If you cannot attend but wish to donate, please visit com/ie/1916afternoontea or text “MND” to 50300 to donate €2. the time of my initial enquiry through to the installation of my stairlift, and the follow-up checks, I have received a level of courtesy and service which I thought had long ago disappeared. Thank you all again for a great job well done.” Victor Moore - Dundalk.

To arrange a FREE, no obligation survey of your staircase, or if you have any other questions, please call 042 942 4018 or go to 1 Newcastle; 2 Exodus; 3/ Chitty Chitty Bang Bang; 4 Denmark and Sweden; 5 San Francisco; 6 Antwerp; 7 Tamla Mowtown; 8 An Poc Fada; 9 Madame Butterfly; 10 Hercule Poirot; The Stinker - Home Alone. Hercule Poirot | Agatha Christie Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Edit His character was based on two other fictional detectives of the time: Marie Belloc Lowndes' Hercule Popeau and Frank Howel Evans' Monsieur Poiret, a retired French police officer living in London. A more obvious influence on the early Poirot stories is that of Arthur Conan Doyle. In An Autobiography Christie admits that "I was still writing in the Sherlock Holmes tradition – eccentric detective, stooge assistant, with a Lestrade-type Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Japp." Poirot also bears a striking resemblance to A. E. W.

Mason's fictional detective – Inspector Hanaud of the French Sûreté-who, first appearing in the 1910 novel "At the Villa Rose," predates the writing of the first Poirot novel by six years. In chapter 4 of the second Inspector Hanaud novel, "The House of the Arrow" (1924), Hanaud declares sanctimoniously to the heroine, "You are wise, Mademoiselle… For, after all, I am Hanaud. There is only one." Poirot's being a Belgian, unlike the above-mentioned models, is clearly the result of the first book being written in 1916 (though only published in 1920). Not only did his coming from a country occupied by Germany provide a very good reason why such a skilled detective would be out of work and available to solve mysteries at an English country house, but also at the time of writing it was considered patriotic to express sympathy with the Belgians – since the invasion of their country had constituted Britain's casus belli for entering World War I.

Popularity Edit His first published appearance was in The Mysterious Affair at Styles (published 1920) and his last was in Curtain (published 1975, the year before Christie died). On publication of this novel, Poirot was the only fictional character to be given an obituary in The New York Times ; August 6, 1975 "Hercule Poirot is Dead; Famed Belgian Detective". Appearance and personal attributes Edit Here is how Captain Arthur Hastings first describes Poirot: "He was hardly more than five feet four inches but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. The neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. Yet this quaint dandified little man who, I was sorry to see, now limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police." In the later books, the limp is not mentioned.

Poirot has dark hair, which he dyes later in life (though many of his screen incarnations are portrayed as bald or balding), and green eyes that are repeatedly described as shining "like a cat's" when he is struck by a clever idea. Frequent mention is made of his patent-leather shoes, damage to which is frequently a subject of (for the reader, comical) misery on his part. Poirot's appearance, regarded as fastidious during his early career, is hopelessly out of fashion later in his career. "The plane dropped slightly. "Mon estomac," thought Hercule Poirot, and closed his eyes determinedly." Among Poirot's most significant personal attributes is the sensitivity of this stomach. He suffers from sea sickness, and in Death in the Clouds believes that his air sickness prevents him from being more alert at the time of the murder. Later in his life, we are told: "Always a man who had taken his stomach seriously, he was reaping his reward in old age. Eating was not only a physical pleasure, it was also an intellectual research." Poirot is extremely punctual and carries a turnip pocket watch almost to the end of his career.

Methods Edit In The Mysterious Affair at Styles , Poirot operates as a fairly conventional, clue-based detective, depending on logic, which is represented in his vocabulary by two common phrases: his use of "the little grey cells" and "order and method". Irritating to Hastings (and, sometimes, to the reader) is the fact that Poirot will sometimes conceal from him important details of his plans, as in The Big Four where Hastings is kept in the dark throughout the climax. This aspect of Poirot is less evident in the later novels, partly because there is rarely a narrator so there is no one for Poirot to mislead. As early as Murder on the Links , where he still largely depends on clues, Poirot mocks a rival detective who focuses on the traditional trail of clues that had been established in detective fiction by the example of Sherlock Holmes: footprints, fingerprints and cigar ash. From this point on he establishes himself as a psychological detective who proceeds not by a painstaking examination of the crime scene, but by enquiring either into the nature of the victim or the murderer. Central to his behaviour in the later novels is the underlying assumption that particular crimes are only committed by particular types of person.

Poirot's methods focus on getting people to talk. Early in the novels, he frequently casts himself in the role of "Papa Poirot", a benign confessor, especially to young women. Later he lies freely in order gain the confidences of other characters, either inventing his own reason for being interested in the case or a family excuse for pursuing a line of questioning. "To this day Harold is not quite sure what made him suddenly pour out the whole story to a little man to whom he had only spoken a few minutes before." Poirot is also willing to appear more foreign or vain than he really is in an effort to make people underestimate him. He admits as much: "It is true that I can speak the exact, the idiomatic English. But, my friend, to speak the broken English is an enormous asset. It leads people to despise you. They say – a foreigner – he can't even speak English properly. […] Also I boast! An Englishman he says often, "A fellow who thinks as much of himself as that cannot be worth much.

[…] And so, you see, I put people off their guard." In the later novels Christie often uses the word mountebank when Poirot is being assessed by other characters, showing that he has successfully passed himself off as a charlatan or fraud. All these techniques help Poirot attain his principal target: "For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away …" Recurring characters Edit Hastings first meets Poirot during his years as a private detective in Europe and almost immediately after they both arrive in England, becomes his life-long partner and appears in many of the novels and stories. Poirot regarded Hastings as a poor private detective, not particularly intelligent, yet helpful in his way of being fooled by the criminal and for his tendency to unknowingly "stumble" onto the truth. It must also be said that Hastings was a man who was capable of great bravery and courage when the road got rough, facing death unflinchingly when confronted by The Big Four and possessing unwavering loyalty towards Poirot. When forced to choose between Poirot and his wife in that novel, he chose Poirot.

The two were an airtight team until Hastings met and married Dulcie Duveen, a beautiful music hall performer half his age, which was not objectionable in the late Victorian, Edwardian world. They later emigrated to Argentina leaving Poirot behind as a "very unhappy old man." Poirot and Hastings are at last reunited in Curtain: Poirot's Last Case. They are also reunited in The ABC Murders when Hastings arrives in England for business. Edit The frequently recurring detective novelist Ariadne Oliver is Agatha Christie's humorous self-caricature. Like Agatha Christie, she isn't overly fond of the detective she is most famous for creating – in Ariadne's case a Finn Sven Hjerson . We never learn about her husband but we know that she hates alcohol and public appearances and has a great fondness for apples until she is put off them by the events of the Hallowe’en party. She also has a habit of constantly changing her hairstyle and in every appearance by her much is made of the clothes and hats she wears.

She has a maid called Milly who prevents the public adoration from becoming too much of a burden on her employer, but does nothing to prevent her aggravating employer from becoming too much of a burden on others. She has authored over fifty six novels and she has a great dislike of people taking and modifying her story characters. She is also the only one in Poirot's universe to have noted that "It’s not natural for five or six people to be on the spot when B is murdered and all have a motive for killing B." She first met Poirot when they put their Cards on the Table and has been bothering him ever since. Edit Poirot's secretary, Miss Lemon, has few human weaknesses. The only two mistakes she is ever recorded making are a typing error during the events of Hickory Dickory Dock and the mis-mailing of an electric bill. Poirot described her as being "Unbelievably ugly and incredibly efficient. Anything that she mentioned as worth consideration usually was worth consideration." She is an expert on nearly everything and plans to create the perfect filing system. She also once worked for the government agent-turned-philanthropist, Parker Pyne .

Whether this was during one of Poirot’s numerous retirements or before she entered his employment is unknown. Edit Japp is an Inspector from Scotland Yard and appears in many of the stories, trying to solve the cases Poirot is working on. Japp is an outgoing, loud and sometimes inconsiderate man by nature and his relationship with the bourgeois Belgian is one of the stranger aspects of Poirot’s world. He first met Poirot in Belgium, 1904, during the Abercrombie Forgery and later that year joined forces again to hunt down a criminal known as Baron Altara. They also meet in England where Poirot often helps Japp solve a case and lets him take the credit in return for special favours. These favours usually entail being supplied with cases that would interest him. Edit Georges (we are never told his last name) is a classic English valet and first entered Poirot’s employ in 1923 and didn’t leave his side until the 1970s, shortly before Poirot’s death. A competent, matter-of-fact man with an extensive knowledge of the English aristocracy and absolutely no imagination, Georges provides a steady contrast to Hastings.

Hercule Poirot's life Edit "I suppose you know pretty well everything there is to know about Poirot's family by this time". It is difficult to draw any concrete conclusions about Poirot's family due to the fact that Poirot often supplies false or misleading information about himself or his background in order to assist him in obtaining information relevant to a particular case. In chapter 21 of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd , for example, we learn that he has been talking about a mentally disabled nephew: this proves to be a ruse so that he can find out about homes for the mentally unfit … but that does not mean that Poirot does not have such a nephew. In Dumb Witness, he regales us with stories of his elderly invalid mother as a pretence to investigate the local nurses. In The Big Four Hastings believes that he meets Achille Poirot who (in an apparent parody of Mycroft Holmes) is evidently his smarter brother.

On this occasion, Achille is almost certainly Poirot himself in disguise (Poirot speaks in Chapter 18 of having sent Achille "back to the land of myths"), but this does not conclusively demonstrate that Poirot does not have a brother, or even a brother called Achille. Any evidence regarding Poirot for which Poirot himself is the source is therefore most unreliable. Achille Poirot is also mentioned by Dr. Burton in the prelude to The Labours of Hercules. Poirot was apparently born in Spa, Belgium and, based on the conjecture that he was thirty at the time of his retirement from the Belgian police force at the time of the outbreak of the First World War, it is suggested that he was born in the mid 1880s. This is all extremely vague, as Poirot is thought to be an old man in his dotage even in the early Poirot novels, and in An Autobiography Christie admitted that she already imagined him to be an old man in 1920.

(At the time, of course, she had no idea she would be going on writing Poirot books for many decades to come.) Much of the suggested dating for Poirot's age is therefore post-rationalisation on the part of those attempting to make sense of his extraordinarily long career. Poirot is a Roman Catholic by birth, and retains a strong sense of Catholic morality later in life. Not much is known of Poirot’s childhood other than he once claimed in Three Act Tragedy to have been from a large family with little wealth. In Taken at the Flood , he further claimed to have been raised and educated by nuns, raising the possibility that he (and any siblings) were orphaned. Poirot’s police years Edit "Gustave […] was not a policeman. I have dealt with policemen all my life and I know. He could pass as a detective to an outsider but not to a man who was a policeman himself." — Hercule Poirot in "The Erymanthian Boar" (1940). As an adult, Poirot joined the Belgian police force.

Very little mention is made in Christie's work about this part of his life, but in "The Nemean Lion" (1939) Poirot himself refers to a Belgian case of his in which "a wealthy soap manufacturer […] poisoned his wife in order to be free to marry his secretary". We do not know whether this case resulted in a successful prosecution or not; moreover, Poirot is not above lying in order to produce a particular effect in the person to whom he is speaking, so this evidence is not reliable. Inspector Japp gives some insight into Poirot's career with the Belgian police when introducing him to a colleague: "You've heard me speak of Mr Poirot? It was in 1904 he and I worked together – the Abercrombie forgery case – you remember he was run down in Brussels. Ah, those were the days Moosier. Then, do you remember "Baron" Altara? There was a pretty rogue for you! He eluded the clutches of half the police in Europe. But we nailed him in Antwerp – thanks to Mr. Poirot here." Perhaps this is enough evidence to suggest that Poirot's police career was a successful one.

In the short story The Chocolate Box (1923) Poirot provides Captain Arthur Hastings with an account of what he considers to be his only failure. Poirot admits that he has failed to solve a crime "innumerable" times: "I have been called in too late. Very often another, working towards the same goal, has arrived there first. Twice I have been struck down with illness just as I was on the point of success." Nevertheless, he regards the case in "The Chocolate Box", which took place in 1893, as his only actual failure of detection. Again, Poirot is not reliable as a narrator of his personal history and there is no evidence that Christie sketched it out in any depth. It was also in this period that Poirot shot a man who was firing from a roof onto the public below. Poirot has retired from the Belgian police force by the time that he meets Hastings in 1916 on the case retold in The Mysterious Affair at Styles . It should be noted that Poirot is a French-speaking Belgian, i.e.

a Walloon; but there can hardly be found any occasion where he refers to himself as such, or is so referred to by others. At the time of writing, at least of the earlier books where the character was defined, non-Belgians such as Agatha Christie were far less aware than nowadays of the deep linguistic divide in Belgian society. Career as a private detective Edit "I had called in at my friend Poirot's rooms to find him sadly overworked. So much had he become the rage that every rich woman who had mislaid a bracelet or lost a pet kitten rushed to secure the services of the great Hercule Poirot." During World War I, Poirot left Belgium for Britain as a refugee. It was here, on 16 July 1916, that he again met his lifelong friend, Captain Arthur Hastings, and solved the first of his cases to be published: The Mysterious Affair at Styles . After that case Poirot apparently came to the attention of the British secret service, and undertook cases for the British government, including foiling the attempted abduction of the Prime Minister. After the war Poirot became a free agent and began undertaking civilian cases.

He moved into what became both his home and work address, 56B Whitehaven Mansions, Sandhurst Square, London W1. It was chosen by Poirot for its symmetry. His first case was "The Affair at the Victory Ball", which saw Poirot enter the high society and begin his career as a private detective. Between the world wars, Poirot traveled all over Europe and the Middle East investigating crimes and murders. Most of his cases happened during this period and he was at the height of his powers at this point in his life. Murder on the Links saw the Belgian pit his grey cells against a French murderer. In the Middle East he solved Murder on the Orient Express (though the bulk of the story takes places in the territory of the former Yugoslavia), the Death on the Nile , and the Murder in Mesopotamia with ease and even survived Appointment with Death . However he did not travel to the Americas or Australia, probably due to his sea sickness. "It is this villainous sea that troubles me! The mal de mer – it is horrible suffering!" It was during this time he met the Countess Vera Rossakoff , a glamorous jewel thief.

The history of the Countess is, like Poirot's, steeped in mystery. She claims to have been a member of the Russian aristocracy before the Russian Revolution and suffered greatly as a result, but how much of that story is true is an open question. Even Poirot acknowledges that Rossakoff has told several wildly varying accounts of her early life. Poirot later became smitten with the woman and allowed her to escape justice. "It is the misfortune of small, precise men always to hanker after large and flamboyant women. Poirot had never been able to rid himself of the fatal fascination that the Countess held for him." Although letting the Countess escape may be morally questionable, that impulse to take the law into his own hands was far from unique. In "The Nemean Lion", he sided with the criminal, Miss Amy Carnaby, and saved her from having to face justice by blackmailing his client Sir Joseph Hoggins, who himself was plotting murder and was unwise enough to let Poirot discover this. Poirot even sent Miss Carnaby two hundred pounds as a final payoff before her dog kidnapping campaign came to an end.

In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd he allowed the murderer to escape justice through suicide and then ensured the truth was never known to spare the feelings of the murderer's relatives. In "The Augean Stables" he helped the government to cover up vast corruption, even though it might be considered more honest to let the truth come out. After his cases in the Middle East, Poirot returned to Britain. Apart from some of the so-called "Labours of Hercules" (see next section) he very rarely traveled abroad during his later career. Retirement Edit "That’s the way of it. Just a case or two, just one case more – the Prima Donna’s farewell performance won’t be in it with yours, Poirot." There is a great deal of confusion about Poirot's retirement. Most of the cases covered by Poirot's private detective agency take place before his retirement to grow marrows, at which time he solves The Murder of Roger Ackroyd .

It has been said that twelve cases related in The Labours of Hercules (1947) must refer to a different retirement, but the fact that Poirot specifically says that he intends to grow marrows indicates that these stories also take place before Roger Ackroyd, and presumably Poirot closed his agency once he had completed them. There is specific mention in "The Capture of Cerberus" to the fact that there has been a gap of twenty years between Poirot's previous meeting with Countess Rossakoff and this one. If the Labours precede the events in Roger Ackroyd, then the Roger Ackroyd case must have taken place around twenty years later than it was published, and so must any of the cases that refer to it. One alternative would be that having failed to grow marrows once, Poirot is determined to have another go, but this is specifically denied by Poirot himself. Another alternative would be to suggest that the Preface to the Labours takes place at one date but that the labours are completed over a matter of twenty years. None of the explanations is especially attractive.

In terms of a rudimentary chronology, Poirot speaks of retiring to grow marrows in Chapter 18 of The Big Four (1927), which places that novel out of published order before Roger Ackroyd. He declines to solve a case for the Home Secretary because he is retired in Chapter One of Peril at End House (1932). He is certainly retired at the time of Three Act Tragedy (1935) but he does not enjoy his retirement and comes repeatedly out of it thereafter when his curiosity is engaged. Nevertheless, he continues to employ his secretary, Miss Lemon, at the time of the cases retold in Hickory Dickory Dock and Dead Man's Folly , which take place in the mid-1950s. It is therefore better to assume that Christie provided no authoritative chronology for Poirot's retirement, but assumed that he could either be an active detective, a consulting detective or a retired detective as the needs of the immediate case required.

One thing that is consistent about Poirot's retirement is that his fame declines during it, so that in the later novels he is often disappointed when characters (especially younger characters) do not recognise either him or his name: "I should, perhaps, Madame, tell you a little more about myself. I am Hercule Poirot." The revelation left Mrs Summerhayes unmoved. "What a lovely name," she said kindly. "Greek, isn't it?" Post World War Edit "He, I knew, was not likely to be far from his headquarters. The time when cases had drawn him from one end of England to the other was past." Poirot is less active during the cases that take place at the end of his career. Beginning with Three Act Tragedy (1934), Christie had perfected during the inter-war years a sub-genre of Poirot novel in which the detective himself spent much of the first third of the novel on the periphery of events. In novels such as Taken at the Flood , After the Funeral and Hickory Dickory Dock he is even less in evidence, frequently passing the duties of main interviewing detective to a subsidiary character.

In Cat Among the Pigeons Poirot's entrance is so late as to be almost an afterthought. Whether this was a reflection of his age or of the fact that Christie was by now heartily sick of him it is difficult to assess. There is certainly a case for saying that Crooked House (1949) and Ordeal by Innocence (1957), which are not Poirot novels at all but so easily could have been, represent a logical endpoint of the general diminution of Poirot himself within the Poirot sequence. Towards the end of his career it becomes clear that Poirot's retirement is no longer a convenient fiction. He assumes a genuinely inactive lifestyle during which he concerns himself with studying famous unsolved cases of the past and reading detective novels. He even writes a book about mystery fiction in which he deals sternly with Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins. In the absence of a more appropriate puzzle, he solves such inconsequential domestic problems as the presence of three pieces of orange peel in his umbrella stand. Poirot (and, it is reasonable to suppose, his creator) becomes increasingly bemused by the vulgarism of the up and coming generation's young people.

In Hickory Dickory Dock , he investigates the strange goings on in a student hostel, while in the Third Girl he is forced into contact with the smart set of Chelsea youths. In the growing drug and pop culture of the sixties, he proves himself once again, but has become heavily reliant on other investigators (especially the private investigator, Mr. Goby) who provide him with the clues that he can no longer gather for himself. "You're too old. Nobody told me you were so old. I really don't want to be rude but – there it is. You're too old. I'm really very sorry." Death Edit Poirot dies from inevitable complications of a heart condition at the end of Curtain: Poirot's Last Case . By this point in his life he is wearing a wig and false moustache, and also seems to be afflicted by arthritis. In the book the Curtain: Poirot's Last Case Hastings finds a manuscript written by Poirot, within the confines of the script is a confession that Poirot has committed murder. He also states that since he has become something that he has always opposed and fought, he neglects to take his heart medication, which subsequently causes his death.

With Norton unconscious, Poirot, whose incapacity had been faked (a trick for which he needed a temporary valet who did not know how healthy he was) moved the body back to Norton’s room in his wheelchair. Then, he disguised himself as Norton by removing his own wig, putting on Norton’s dressing-gown and ruffling up his grey hair. Poirot was the only short suspect at the house. With it established that Norton was alive after he left Poirot’s room, Poirot shot him – with perfect and unnecessary symmetry – in the centre of his forehead. He locked the room with a duplicate key that Hastings knew Poirot to possess; both Hastings and the reader would have assumed that the duplicate key was to Poirot's own room, but Poirot had changed rooms before Norton's arrival, and it was to this previous room that he had the key. Poirot’s last actions were to write the confession and await his death, which he accelerated by moving amyl nitrite phials out of his own reach. His last wish is implicitly that Hastings will marry Elizabeth Cole: a final instance of the inveterate matchmaking that has characterised his entire career.

Major novels Edit The Poirot books take readers through the whole of his life in England, from the first book ( The Mysterious Affair at Styles ), where he is a refugee staying at Styles, to the last Poirot book ( Curtain ), where he visits Styles once again before his death. In between, Poirot solves cases outside England as well, including his most famous case, Murder on the Orient Express (1934). Hercule Poirot became famous with the publication, in 1926, of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd , whose surprising solution proved controversial. The novel is still among the most famous of all detective novels: Edmund Wilson alludes to it in the title of his well-known attack on detective fiction, "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" Aside from Roger Ackroyd, the most critically-acclaimed Poirot novels appeared from 1932 to 1942, including such acknowledged classics as Murder on the Orient Express , The ABC Murders (1935), Cards on the Table (1936), and Death on the Nile (1937).

The last of these, a tale of multiple homicide upon a Nile steamer, was judged by the celebrated detective novelist John Dickson Carr to be among the ten greatest mystery novels of all time. The 1942 novel Five Little Pigs (aka Murder in Retrospect), in which Poirot investigates a murder committed sixteen years before by analyzing various accounts of the tragedy, is a Rashomon-like performance that critic and mystery novelist Robert Barnard called the best of the Christie novels. Portrayals Edit Austin Trevor debuted the role of Poirot on film in the 1931 movie Alibi. The film was based on the stage play Alibi which had been adapted by Michael Morton from the novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd . Trevor reprised the role of Poirot twice, in Black Coffee and Lord Edgware Dies . Trevor said once that he was probably cast as Poirot simply because he could do a French accent. Albert Finney Edit Albert Finney played Poirot in 1974 in the cinematic version of Murder on the Orient Express . His portrayal was considered by many to be the definitive Poirot until David Suchet took up the role.

It was a very faithful adaptation of the novel and was, at the time, the most successful British film ever made. It received the stamp of approval from Agatha Christie herself. Finney is, so far, the only actor to receive an Academy Award nomination for playing Poirot, though he did not win. Peter Ustinov Peter Ustinov played Poirot a total of six times, starting with Death on the Nile (1978). He reprised the role in Evil Under the Sun (1982) and Appointment With Death (1988). Christie was less sanguine about Ustinov's portrayal, given that Poirot, written as short, slim, and with coal-black hair, bore little resemblance to the tall, heavy, grey-haired Ustinov. When Christie's daughter, Rosalind Hicks , observed to Ustinov that Poirot did not look like him, Ustinov quipped "He does now!" He appeared again as Poirot in three made-for-television movies: Thirteen at Dinner (1985), Dead Man's Folly (1986), and Murder in Three Acts (1986).

The first of these was based on Lord Edgware Dies and was made by Warner Brothers. It also starred Faye Dunaway and David Suchet as Inspector Japp, just before he himself played the famous detective. (Ironically, it is reputed that David Suchet highlights his performance as Japp to be "possibly the worst performance of [his] career.") Other Edit Tony Randall , The Alphabet Murders (1965) (Film, also known as The ABC Murders). This was more a satire on Poirot than a straightforward adaptation, and was greatly changed from the original. It turned the sharp and observant detective into a blundering buffoon who solves the case almost by accident. Television Edit David Suchet has starred in many Hercule Poirot films and four new ones – Cards on the Table, The Mystery of the Blue Train, After the Funeral and Taken At The Flood – were shown in the UK in March/April 2006. For more information about the ongoing UK television series starring David Suchet , see Agatha Christie's Poirot .

Other Ian Holm , Murder by the Book, 1986 (TV) Alfred Molina , Murder on the Orient Express, 2001 (TV) Animated Edit In 2004, NHK (a Japanese TV network) produced a 39 episode anime series titled Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple , as well as a manga series under the same title released in 2005. The series, adapting several of the best-known Poirot and Marple stories, ran from July 4, 2004 through May 15, 2005, and is now being shown as re-runs on NHK and other networks in Japan. Poirot was voiced by Satomi Kōtarō and Miss Marple was voiced by Yachigusa Kaoru.

Poirot's Last Case: 10 Clues About Agatha Christie's Most Famous Detective Poirot's Last Case: 10 Clues About Agatha Christie's Most Famous Detective November 13, 2013 15:44 GMT Curtain: Poirot's Last Case sees the detective wheelchair-bound (ITV) Hercule Poirot is to solve his last case on ITV tonight [13 November], with the aging detective teaming up with old friend Captain Hastings to try to catch a murderer. Agatha Christie's Poirot: Curtain: Poirot's Last Case sees the detective confined to a wheelchair with arthritis. He and Hastings are reunited at Styles, the country house where they first met three decades earlier, when Poirot was a refugee and Hastings a wounded soldier. The house is also the scene of their first murder investigation. Poirot, convinced Style will once again become a crime scene, recruits Hastings to help him as his health deteriorates and the attacks begin.

Top 10 Poirot Facts as Agatha Christie's famous series draws to a close: David Suchet, 67, has played Hercule Poirot for 24 years, first appearing as the detective in January 1989 in The Adventure of the Clapham Cook. He has appeared in 70 episodes of Poirot in total. Suchet listened to French and Belgian radio to perfect his accent for Poirot and said his moustache helps him stay in character. "As soon as the moustache goes on, I speak as him. It changes the flexibility of my top lip and it's like a catalyst that, immediately, gets me into the little man," he told the Radio Times. David Suchet has played Poirot for 24 years (ITV) Suchet has been known to utilise method acting techniques for the series. While filming one episode, he found out a visitor to the set had had her handbag stolen, so Suchet launched an investigation in character, analysing the crime and drawing up a list of suspects.

Captain Hastings' first description of Poirot says he is just 5ft 4, has a head the shape of an egg, a military moustache and extremely neat attire: "I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound," Christie wrote. Poirot first appeared in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, published in 1920. Ten years later, Christie said she found the character "insufferable" and by 1960 she said he was "detestable". After his last appearance in Curtain, published 1975, he had an obituary published on the front page of the New York Times, the only fictional character ever to have done so. Agatha Christie wrote Poirot novels for 55 years (Reuters) Poirot was Christie's most long-lived character, appearing in 33 novels, one play and over 50 short stories over 55 years. Suchet said: "She wrote his death and locked it in a safe ... her publisher wouldn't allow her to publish it!" Many actors have taken on the role of Hercule Poirot over the years.

The first time the character appeared on screen he was in 1931, played by British actor Austin Trevor. He appeared in Alibi, Black Coffee and Lord Edgware Dies. Earlier this month, Agatha Christie was named the Best Crime Author of all time by the Crime Writers' Association . The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was named the Best Ever Novel, in which Inspector Poirot investigates the death of Mrs Ferrars, a widow rumoured to have killed her late husband. Florin Court in Barbican, location of Poirot's office and home (wiki commons) Poirot's home and work address is 56B Whitehaven Mansions. The house was first introduced in 1935 in the ABC Murders, when Hastings first visits the house after returning home from Argentina. The actual house is located on Charterhouse Square in London and is a residential building called Florin Court, with the closest tube being Barbican. SPOILER: Poirot dies from complications of a heart condition at the end of Curtain after becoming the killer himself, with the 'murderer' never actually killing anyone directly.

His last actions are to write a confession and wait to die by moving his amyl nitrate phials pills from his reach, meaning he dies of a heart attack. Agatha Christie's Poirot: Curtain: Poirot's Last Case is on tonight (13 November) at 8pm on ITV. Share Stay up to date with our daily newsletter YOU MIGHT LIKE THISSponsored Content by Taboola IBT Video

Question: Which fictional detective lived at 56b Whitehaven Mansions?
Answer: Hercule Poirot