Was Agatha Christie a Snob?

The broadsheets (Times, Guardian) can't mention Agatha Christie without sneering at the way she always wrote about toffs in country houses.

"If all her mysteries were as ingenious as this usual country house Cluedo plot, I could understand why Christie is still Britain's most popular detective writer," wrote Sue Read in the Guardian, 11 July 2009, about The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – which is set in an English village, not in a country house.

But "the pleasure of her writing comes from the way that a seemingly breezy style is suffused with a sharp sense of irony," wrote Nicholas Blincoe in the same paper on 16 January 2009.

I think I get it - everyone repeats the "country house" slur and passes it round like Chinese whispers. Big country houses were built by aristocratic landowners from the 17th century on. They were the homes of titled people who lived off the income from their estates (farms, woods, rivers). They had large staffs of servants. Not many country houses survive in this form, though 10% of the population still owns 90% of the land.

Not every house in the country in a Christie novel is a "country house" in this sense – many of her stories are set in gentlemen's residences in commuter belt towns, seaside resorts or country towns.

Agatha Christie wrote 80 detective novels and lots of short stories. How many are set in country houses? Just as many are set in English villages (often St Mary Mead, home of Miss Marple). Many reflect her life in the Middle East as the wife of an archaeologist. She wrote about it in Come Tell Me How You Live. When she did set her stories in country houses, they are more often meeting places of cabinet ministers and wealthy industrialists than hangouts for bright young people with time on their hands. Her titled people are often self-made men who have been ennobled in their lifetimes. She was interested in the fate of country houses as they moved with the times, becoming hostels, institutions, blocks of flats and schools.

It occurs to me that those who repeat the same old clichés about Christie haven't actually read any of the books - they've only watched the telly adaptations.

The Christie knockers are still at it (October 2010).

"Agatha Christie’s fiction encapsulates an England that is hierarchical, rural and peaceable. When the murderer is unmasked, this idyll returns to its natural state," says Oliver Kamm in the Times Oct 9 2010, reviewing PD James’s Talking About Detective Fiction. Another reviewer, Janet Maslin in the New York Times, Dec 6 2009, says James "doesn’t think much of Christie’s drawing-room mysteries."

See below, Janet and Oliver, and count the rural drawing rooms.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Hercule Poirot) - country house
The Secret Adversary – all over the place including an attic in Soho
Murder on the Links – a French seaside town like Deauville
The Man in the Brown Suit – country village, London, cruise ship, Africa
The Secret of Chimneys – country house

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – English village (drawing rooms, dining rooms, doctor's surgery)

The Big Four – France
The Mystery of the Blue Train – English village, London hotel, Blue Train, Nice, St Mary Mead
The Seven Dials Mystery – several country houses, nightclub in Soho

The Murder at the Vicarage – English village (drawing rooms, artist's studio, vicar's study, church)

The Sittaford Mystery – isolated village on Dartmoor, nearby town (drawing rooms, hotel)
Peril at End House – big house in seaside town (drawing room, dining room, terrace)
Lord Edgware Dies – London (hall, dining rooms)
Murder on the Orient Express – the Orient Express

Why Didn't They Ask Evans? – seaside town, big house next to mental hospital (golf course, drawing room, garage, deserted cottage)

Three Act Tragedy – seaside town, country house (drawing rooms, dining rooms)
Death in the Clouds – aeroplane, London (one of the characters owns a country house)
The A.B.C. Murders – country town, seaside towns, London, Doncaster
Murder in Mesopotamia – Baghdad, a dig near Hassaniyah, Iraq
Come, Tell Me How You Live: An Archaeological Memoir

Cards on the Table – London, village on the Thames (drawing rooms)
Dumb Witness – Large house in the north of England, London
Death on the Nile – Nile paddle steamer, hotel
Appointment with Death – Petra, tents
Hercule Poirot's Christmas – country house

Murder is Easy – a sinister country village and its “big house”, now the home of a newspaper tycoon (drawing rooms)

Then There Were None – mansion on an island
Sad Cypress – large house being cleared after the death of its owner
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe – dentist’s surgery, hotels in London
Evil Under the Sun – hotel on West Country island (lounge, terrace)
N or M? – seaside town, boarding house (sitting room)

The Body in the Library – large house in English village, action moves to flashy hotel in thinly disguised Torquay (breakfast room, library, lounge, ballroom, tennis courts, beach)

Five Little Pigs – big house on cliff overlooking sea (drawing room, dining room, lab, terrace)
The Moving Finger – English village (drawing rooms)
Towards Zero – big house in seaside town, hotels (drawing room, terrace)
Death Comes as the End – Ancient Egypt (What's the Ancient Egyptian for "drawing room"?)
Sparkling Cyanide – London, big house in country (drawing rooms, flashy restaurant, office)

The Hollow – big house in Home Counties – but characters talk a lot about a country house inherited by one of them (drawing room, dining room, kitchen, pool, Poirot's Art Deco cottage)

Taken at the Flood – English country town (drawing rooms, dining rooms, kitchen, hotel)
Crooked House – big house accommodating many members of the same family
A Murder is Announced – English village (drawing room)
They Came to Baghdad – London, Baghdad

Mrs McGinty's Dead – English village, nearby town (drawing rooms, cheap café, estate agent's office)

They Do It with Mirrors – country house partly converted into institution for difficult youths (drawing room)

After the Funeral – big house being broken up on the death of its owner, English village, London (drawing rooms)

A Pocket Full of Rye – London, big house somewhere like Weybridge or Sunningdale, home to members of the same family (drawing room)

Destination Unknown – North Africa, headquarters of sect plotting to take over world (hotels, communal canteens)

Hickory Dickory Dock – student hostel in London (common room)
Dead Man's Folly – country house (drawing room)

4.50 from Paddington – big house built by Victorian fish-paste millionaire, usually empty but for old owner, his daughter and a housekeeper (drawing room, outbuildings)

Ordeal by Innocence – large house in seaside town (drawing room)
Cat Among the Pigeons – Middle East, English girls’ school
The Pale Horse – London (many settings including Chelsea coffee bars), English village (drawing rooms)

The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side – big house in English village, now owned by ageing film star and her entourage (drawing rooms)

The Clocks – seaside town (sitting rooms, typing bureau, Chinese restaurant)
A Caribbean Mystery – Caribbean island hotel (restaurant, terrace)
At Bertram's Hotel – London hotel (lounge)
Third Girl – big house in Surrey, flat in London (drawing room)
Endless Night – architect-designed modernist house in English countryside
By the Pricking of My Thumbs – old people’s home, English village
Hallowe'en Party – English village (drawing room)
Passenger to Frankfurt – around Europe, airport, schloss
Nemesis – a charabanc tour of country houses and gardens now owned by the nation
Elephants Can Remember – rambling around the West Country
Postern of Fate – big house outside a seaside town (transparently Christie’s old home in Torquay)
Curtain – big house shared by paying guests (drawing room)
Sleeping Murder – house in seaside town (drawing room)

More on Christie here, and links to the rest.