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       COPYRIGHT

      HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      Revised edition published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

      Copyright © Anne Hart 1990

      Cover design by Andrew Davidson © HarperCollins/Agatha Christie Ltd 2019

      AGATHA CHRISTIE®, POIROT® and the Agatha Christie Signature are registered trademarks of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK and elsewhere. All rights reserved.

       www.agathachristie.com

      Anne Hart asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008340278

       Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780007397297

       Version: 2019-04-06

       DEDICATION

      For Susan, Peter and Stephen

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

1 The Curtain Rises

2 The English Debut

3 The 1920s

4 The 1930s

       5 The 1940s

       6 The Last Three Decades

       7 The Complete Poirot

       8 The English World of Hercule Poirot

       9 Captain Arthur Hastings, OBE

       10 The Domestic Poirot

       11 The Expeditionary Poirot

       12 ‘My Friend Poirot’

       13 Countess Rossakoff and Mrs Oliver

       14 The Available Poirot

       15 The Detective Poirot

       16 The Curtain Falls

       A Poirot Bibliography

       Hercule Poirot Short Stories

       Poirot on Stage, Film, TV and Radio

       References

       Keep Reading

       About the Author

       Also by Anne Hart

       About the Publisher

       PREFACE

      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

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