On this date in 1921, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot made his first appearance in the UK when the novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles was published. Poirot stars in 33 novels, 51 short stories and 1 original full-length play by Agatha Christie. 10 things you might not know about Hercule Poirot
His name was derived from two other fictional detectives of the time: Marie Belloc Lowndes' Hercule Popeau and Frank Howel Evans' Monsieur Poiret, a retired French police officer living in London. Christie admitted that she was also influenced by Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.
Hercule Poirot is a retired Belgian police officer turned private detective. In case you’ve ever wondered why a retired Belgian policeman is solving murders in English country houses, Christie created the character around the time of the first world war, when the invasion of Belgium was the reason for Britain getting involved. Large numbers of Belgian refugees came to England, of which Poirot was one.
In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Poirot’s old friend Hastings describes him thus: "He was hardly more than five feet four inches but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an Egg, and he always perched it a little on one side…The neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. Yet this quaint dandified little man who, I was sorry to see, now limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police." He uses a special preparation called ‘Revivit’ to conceal his grey hair.
The Poirot family home is in Spa, Belgium, though some believe he was born in a village called Ellezelles in the Belgian province of Hainaut. Not much was ever revealed about his childhood, except he came from a large and not very wealthy family, and he had a younger sister called Yvonne.
He has a sensitive stomach and suffers from sea sickness and air sickness when flying.
He’d almost certainly be diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder today. He’s known to have refused to eat an irregularly shaped loaf of bread, and cannot bear the fact that hen’s eggs aren’t all the same size (“What symmetry can there be on the breakfast table?") He is also particular about his personal finances, preferring to keep a bank balance of 444 pounds, 4 shillings, and 4 pence.
Poirot has been portrayed many times on screen. Actors who have played him include: Charles Laughton (the first to play him on stage in 1928), Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov, David Suchet, John Malkovich, Kenneth Branagh, Alfred Molina and Orson Welles.
When asked what her favourite Poirot novel was, Agatha Christie, after some deliberation, declared it was probably Murder on the Orient Express. However, Christie got thoroughly tired of writing about Poirot and described him as a "detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep". However, since he was extremely popular with her readers, she refused to kill him off.
ITV had no such scruples, and did kill him off, from complications of a heart condition at the end of Curtain: Poirot's Last Case. He died, incidentally, at Styles Court, the location of his first appearance back in 1921. He was the first fictional character to have an obituary published in the New York Times. The front page headline read 'Hercule Poirot is dead. Famed Belgium detective, Hercule Poirot, dies.'
Hercule Poirot's first spoken words were 'Mon ami, Hastings!' His last spoken words (addressed to Hastings) were, 'Cher ami!'
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