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Revised edition published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Anne Hart 1990
Cover design by Andrew Davidson © HarperCollins/Agatha Christie Ltd 2019
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Source ISBN: 9780008340278
Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780007397297
Version: 2019-04-06
For Susan, Peter and Stephen
Contents
8 The English World of Hercule Poirot
9 Captain Arthur Hastings, OBE
13 Countess Rossakoff and Mrs Oliver
Poirot on Stage, Film, TV and Radio
This is a biography of the illustrious Hercule Poirot who, behind a façade of dandyisms and mannerisms, was as shrewd and subtle a detective as ever walked the streets of London. For his creator, the incomparable Agatha Christie, he was at times a torment. In 1938, a mere twenty-two years after his genesis, she exclaimed in an interview: ‘There are moments when I have felt: “Why-Why-Why did I ever invent this detestable, bombastic, tiresome little creature? … Eternally straightening things, eternally boasting, eternally twirling his moustaches and tilting his egg-shaped head” … I point out that by a few strokes of the pen … I could destroy him utterly. He replies, grandiloquently: “Impossible to get rid of Poirot like that! He is much too clever.”’ Indeed he was. Poirot knew a supreme story-teller when he found one and never let go. For him she set her most perfect puzzles, thereby achieving immortality for them both.
As with my biography