Author Agatha Christie is most closely associated with her birthplace, Torquay in Devon.
But this most popular of authors — she's the world's best-selling writer, outsold only by Shakespeare and the Bible — left her mark all over London too.
At Home in London
Our heroine might have thrived at the Devon country houses that so often appear in her detective stories, but she lived in various London properties for many years during her long and eventful life.
Two townhouses in Kensington and Chelsea currently carry plaques that bear her name: Cresswell Place, where she lived with her first husband in the 1920s, and 58 Sheffield Terrace, where she lived from 1934 to 1941.
She was particularly productive at Sheffield Terrace, writing 16 novels there, including Murder in Mesopotamia and Death on the Nile.
But there are other, lesser-known London addresses for Christie, as this Telegraph article is keen to point out.
47-48 Campden Street gets little recognition as one of Christie's homes. There is no blue plaque, although she... lived there for four years, between 1930 and 1934, and... wrote three Poirot novels (Murder on the Orient Express, Peril at End House and Lord Edgware Dies), one Miss Marple book (The Murder at the Vicarage), and two more novels (The Sittaford Mystery and Why didn't they ask Evans?)
A little more detective work, and we've sniffed out a few more. After the war, the Christies settled into a flat at 5 Northwick Terrace in St John's Wood, around 1918. And although details are sketchy, there's evidence that Christie wrote Witness For The Prosecution while living at 48 Swan Court in Chelsea.
Working at UCH
It was while working at University College Hospital during the Second World War that Christie learnt a lot about poisons.
Much of this unique knowledge was put to good use in the crime novels she wrote after the war. The 1961 classic, The Pale Horse, would have been a very different book without the thallium poisoning, apparently suggested to her by UCH Chief Pharmacist Harold Davis.
Agatha and the West End
London's West End features in many of Christie's stories.
And there's been an enduring landmark to Agatha Christie's popularity in Theatreland for many, many years. The Mousetrap, Christie's classic whodunnit, has been running at St Martin's Theatre since 1974. Before that, it had played at the Ambassadors Theatre next door, opening on 25 November 1952.
The world record-breaking show has now exceeded 26,000 performances in London, breaking only during the Covid pandemic.
The 60th anniversary of The Mousetrap in 2012 was marked by the erection of a memorial to Agatha Christie on the junction of Cranbourn Street and Great Newport Street by St Martin's Cross.
Taking the form of a book about 2.5 metres high, and made in bronze, it contains a bust of Christie, as well as images of her greatest creations, and information about her life and work.
The 50-odd book titles included, in more than 30 languages (including braille) were chosen in a competition by her many international fans.
