Synopsis

This Arena Special celebrates the centenary of Dame Agatha Christie's birth with the first film biography of the world's most widely read author. Total sales of her crime novels are calculated in billions, but the creator of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot remains an enigma. During her lifetime Christie guarded her privacy jealously, avoiding interviews and giving little of herself away in her writings. From the narrow confines of a solitary Edwardian childhood to the enduring mystery of her strange disappearance in 1926, Arena Special investigates the contradictions in this shy and outwardly respectable English lady who spent her professional life devising the perfect English murder.