How the Orient Express inspired Agatha Christie’s murderous world
The luxury passenger train not only inspired the author’s enduringly popular 1934 whodunnit ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ but also changed her life
Luxury travel meets murder when the train passenger Belgian detective Hercule Poirot finds himself in the middle of whodunnit in Agatha Christie’s classic novel Murder on the Orient Express.
During his first voyage aboard the Orient Express, Christie’s great-grandson, James Pritchard, reminisced about why the “Queen of Crime – as she was known – became enamoured with the famous locomotive that has recently been restored by the French state.
The storied train and its voyages to the exotic east not only inspired one of Christie’s most famous mysteries, but also defined her.
“The Orient Express changed her life,” Prichard told the Associated Press.
Christie first travelled on the train in 1928 during the most painful moment in her life, after Prichard’s great-grandfather, Archie Christie, walked out on her.
“She wanted a holiday and someone suggested she went on an archaeological dig in Syria,” Prichard said.
For a woman travelling solo in that era, the trip was “extraordinarily brave and adventurous”, he added.
She met an archaeologist on the trip, Max Mallowan, who became her second husband, and they travelled via the Orient Express for years to digs in the Middle East.
“That was their commute, that’s how they got there,” Prichard said.