Welcome to She Done It. I'm Caroline Crampton.

We all think we know Agatha Christie. How could we not? She's one of the best-selling

authors of all time, an icon of British popular culture, and as you are listening to this

podcast, probably one of your favourite writers. During her lifetime, and in the almost

half a century since her death, plenty of time and ink has been devoted to chronicling

her life and her work. Surely there can't be anything left unknown about her, right?

Wrong. Agatha Christie's relationship with publicity and the media evolved over her

decades-long career, and she came to value privacy very highly. She wrote an autobiography

that is heavily weighted in favour of her childhood years, and which doesn't address

her writing career in nearly as much detail. Before her death, she politely resisted

the efforts of biographers who wanted her cooperation for revelatory volumes, pointing them instead

towards her own forthcoming account. For such an incredibly well-known person, she

is rather a mystery, still. Of course, because of this, dubiously

sourced myths and narratives about Christie have been able to thrive. Her enduring popularity

and fame acts as a catalyst too, keeping newspapers and readers hungry for new revelations about

a writer who came to hate making headlines. Today we're going to look at some of these

persistent myths and do our best to get a clear review of the elusive Agatha Christie.

And to help me do this, I have the ideal guest, Lucy Wesley, historian and broadcaster,

and the author of a new biography of Agatha Christie that offers a fresh perspective on the

fascinating, yet tangled versions that exist of the Queen of Crime.

So Lucy, welcome to She Done It. Thank you. I have to tell your listeners that I'm a

She Done It fan and listener myself, so I'm very excited to be actually on it.

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