Agatha Christie's England

About the Film

There is no more quintessentially English writer than Agatha Christie. Through her sensational murder mysteries, she created a literary universe that captured England's spirit like no one before or since. But the magical worlds where she set her stories are in fact drawn from real places.

Retracing Agatha's footsteps across England, we visit Beacon Cove, the exact location where a young Agatha swam with her young nephew when he narrowly escaped drowning - the memory of which would be reprised in her 1939 novel "And Then There Were None" when a young nanny lets the boy in her charge drown.

In Ealing, we hear how the young Agatha witnessed her great aunt, affectionately known as Granny, devour local gossip and the news, including the fascination with the day's gruesome murder trials, the fingerprints of which would be all over Agatha's fictional world of Miss Marple and the village of St. Mary’s Mead in 1930's "The Murder at the Vicarage." And we explore how WWI Agatha qualified as a pharmacist, introducing her to poisons, but also Belgian refugees flooded Torquay, inspiration for another of Agatha's greatest creations, Hercule Poirot.

With access to both her family and those who lived with her and knew her best, to her private homes combined with visits to Ugbrook House, where she met first husband Archie; Abney Hall, the original inspiration for Agatha’s inimitable country house murder template; Brown’s Hotel, immortalised in 1965's "At Bertram’s Hotel"; her country retreat Greenway, the boat house of which plays host to a scene in "Dead Man’s Folly," we hear how Agatha drew on her surroundings as a magpie would, as both the people, and the places she encounter, found themselves immortalized in her extraordinary canon of work.