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A-I. Dame Agatha Christie

15 Sept 1890 – 12 Jan 1976

While many writers travelled to the English Riviera for inspiration, the best-selling novelist of all time is a home-grown talent. Agatha Christie was born into a comfortably wealthy family in Torquay and spent much of her youth in the resort, where she also served in the Town Hall hospital as a nurse during the First World War. The town and its colourful characters certainly influenced her writing, with Hercule Poirot inspired by the Belgian refugees she met in Torquay and Miss Marple based on her grandmother’s friends, who were far more fussy than her own relative.

Her love of South Devon saw her buy a holiday home at Greenway in later life, which also served as inspiration for some of her most famous stories. The prolific writer wrote 66 detective novels, 14 short story collections and the world’s longest running play – ‘The Mousetrap’. Famously, she has only been outsold by the Bible and Shakespeare, having sold more than two billion copies across the globe. Amateur sleuths are encouraged to follow in the footsteps of the Bay’s most famous literary daughter and discover several of the places that were influential in her life and works.

A. The Grand Hotel

This beautiful hotel with award-winning views was built to resemble a French chateau and wouldn’t look out of place on the Côte d’Azur. Agatha spent her honeymoon night here with her first husband, Archie Christie, on Christmas Eve 1914. Archie, a qualified aviator with the Royal Flying Corps, came home on leave from France. Today the hotel boasts an Agatha Christie Suite furnished in a 1930’s style, with a vintage typewriter under a portrait of the author. The terrace makes an ideal spot for enjoying a cream tea while reading your favourite Christie mystery.

B. Torre Abbey

While Agatha was growing up, the Cary family still resided in Torre Abbey and she was known to have attended parties there. Today it is open to the public and is the home of the International Agatha Christie Festival.

The stunning interior gardens also hide a dark secret. Here you will uncover the Potent Plants Garden, an Agatha Christie-inspired display with a variety of fascinating plants that may kill or cure! Literary fans will love trying to solve the mystery of the missing story titles using the clues in the four garden beds.The house is also worth exploring, as the four floors reveal over 800 years of history and art.

C. Princess Pier

A favourite spot of Agatha’s for roller-skating with her friends during her youth, and built in the same year she was born. Take a waterfront stroll along Torquay’s palm-lined promenade to the end of the pier to watch the world pass by with fishing boats, sightseeing cruises and paddleboards. Roller-skating was very fashionable during the author’s youth and would cost twopence if you bought your own skates. £1.7 million was spent on the pier in 2018 to repair storm damage and make the structure fully accessible.

‘Roller-skating on the pier was a pastime much in vogue. The surface of the pier was extremely rough, and you fell down a good deal, but it was great fun. There was a kind of concert room at the end of the pier, not used in winter of course, and this was opened as a kind of indoor rink. It was also possible to skate at what was grandly called the Assembly Rooms, or the Bath Saloons, where the big dances took place. This was much more high-class, but most of us preferred the pier. You had your own skates and you paid twopence for admission, and once on the pier you skated!’ – Agatha Christie An Autobiography

D. Princess Gardens & The Pavilion

Without doubt one of the most popular spots for an evening stroll in the Bay, the gardens featured in the crime novel, ‘The ABC Murders’. These stunning pleasure gardens, built on reclaimed land, were named in honour of Princess Louise, the daughter of Queen Victoria. With beautiful flowerbeds, exotic Torbay palm trees and lawns; the attractive fountain (donated by the nearby Torbay Hotel) is a particular highlight. The nearby Royal Terrace Gardens, known locally as Rock Walk, with sub-tropical Mediterranean plants and an illuminated staircase, offers an elevated and unrivalled vantage point to enjoy the entire bay. The Pavilion was once a thriving art nouveau style Edwardian concert hall and theatre which attracted the most celebrated artists of the day such as Sir Edward Elgar, Rachmaninoff and Anna Pavlova. Agatha was a regular visitor and it was following a Wagner concert at The Pavilion, that Archie Christie proposed to the young Agatha Miller.

Agatha Christie

E. Torquay Museum

Home to the UK’s only dedicated Agatha Christie Gallery, you can step inside Poirot’s study and lounge, featuring furniture, books, pictures and even the fireplace used in the ITV adaptations starring David Suchet. Other highlights include a Miss Marple outfit as worn by Joan Hickson, David Suchet’s Poirot’s famous walking cane and some of the author’s personal effects and first edition novels. Agatha’s father was a member of Torquay Natural History Society, which later became Torquay Museum.

F. Royal Torbay Yacht Club

The English Riviera boasts some of the finest sailing waters around the UK and includes in its rich maritime history the first modern day tall ships race and the 1948 Olympic watersports. In her autobiography Agatha talks about the club, of which her father Frederick was a prominent member. Her father divulged that some of the men would use opera glasses to try and spy on the women swimming from the ladies’ only beach at Beacon Cove below.

In her autobiography, Agatha also reveals how she almost drowned whilst swimming here in her youth, which could have dramatically changed the face of crime fiction as we know it. Whilst the club is members only, you can get similar views from the lookout point.

‘The Torbay Yacht Club was stationed on Beacon terrace, just above the Ladies’ Bathing Cove, and although the beach was properly invisible from the club windows, the sea around the raft was not, and, according to my father, a good many of the gentlemen spent their time with opera glasses enjoying the sight of female figures displayed in what they the hopefully thought of as almost a state of nudity! I don’t think we can have been very appealing in those shapeless garments.‘ – Agatha Christie An Autobiography

G. Meadfoot Beach

Although Torre Abbey Sands and Corbyn Head Beach were the first to end gender segregation, Agatha preferred to swim at the more fashionable Meadfoot Beach, once mixed bathing was allowed here. It remains a beautiful spot to visit, with the crescent of the Osborne Hotel overlooking the curve of the coastline, with Shag Rock straight ahead and Thatcher’s Rock off to the left. As a child, Agatha spent nearly every day of the summer at this beach with her sister Madge and nephew Jack.

‘The Ladies’ Bathing-Cove remained sacred to segregation, and the men were left in peace in their dashing triangles. As far as I remember, the men were not particularly anxious to avail themselves to the joys of mixed bathing; they stuck rigidly to their own private preserve. Such of them as arrived at Meadfoot were usually embarrassed by the sight of their sisters’ friends in what they still considered a state of near nudity.’ – Agatha Christie An Autobiography

Agatha Christie

H. Cockington

No visit to the English Riviera should be complete without spending a few hours in Cockington, a 450-acre country park. The delightful chocolate box village with its thatched cottages, cream tea spots, pub (designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens), artisan craft studios, manor house and charming church would make an ideal setting for one of Christie’s murder mysteries. As a child she loved horse riding through the country lanes, while she would also take part in many amateur theatricals organised by the Mallock family, who were friends of the Millers and whose ancestors had owned the stately home for some 300 years.

Agatha Christie

I. Greenway House

This extraordinary estate was the beloved holiday home of Agatha Christie and her family. Now owned by the National Trust, the house has been carefully preserved and contains beautiful collections of books, botanical china and archaeology, all accumulated by the family over the years.

The house also boasts stunning features, including romantic gardens spilling down to the River Dart. The house features in three of her books, dubbed the Greenway Collection - ‘Five Little Pigs’, ‘Ordeal By Innocence’ and ‘Dead Man’s Folly’. The latter was the very last Poirot episode to be made starring David Suchet and was filmed on location at the house.

‘One day we saw that a house was up for sale that I had known when I was young. Greenway House, on the Dart, a house that my mother had always said, and I had thought also, was the most perfect of the various properties on the Dart...So we went over to Greenway, and very beautiful the house and grounds were. A white Georgian house of about 1780 or 90, with woods sweeping down to the Dart below, and a lot of fine shrubs and trees - the ideal house, a dream house.’ – Agatha Christie An Autobiography

Discover

More Writers

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Writers on the Riviera

Take a literary tour around the English Riviera and uncover the places and stories of the greatest writers of all time, who, for the past 200 years, have flocked to the English Riviera.
1. Mary Shelley

Mary was a novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer and travel writer, most famous for her novel Frankenstein. She married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1816. In 1817 the Shelleys holidayed in Torquay.
2. George Bernard Shaw

The Irish playwright is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938) for ‘Pygmalion’. The 1897 play ‘You Never Can Tell’ was set in Torquay.
3. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A poet and short story writer with a career spanning 4 decades. Elizabeth wrote about industrialisation, slavery, political leadership, religious controversy and the problems faced by women in society.
4. Wilfred Owen

Take a moment at the War Memorial, a fitting place to mark Wilfred Owen, widely regarded as one of Britain’s greatest war poets.
5. Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Edward was a successful poet, playwright and novelist with an impressive political career, serving twice in Parliament and going on to the House of Lords as Baron Lytton.
6. Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Alfred was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria’s reign and remains one of the most popular British poets. Alfred excelled at writing short lyrics, as in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’.
7. Lesley Pearse

International bestselling author Lesley lives in Torquay. She was told as a child that she had too much imagination for her own good. Clearly this imagination has now been put to good use with 25 novels under her belt!
8. Charles Kingsley

Charles was a priest, a university professor, social reformer, historian and novelist, best known for ‘The Water Babies’, ‘The Heroes’ and ‘Westward Ho!’
9. James Joyce

An Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, teacher, and literary critic, James is regarded as one of the most important 20th century authors.
10. Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin was a naturalist and biologist known for his theory of evolution, the process of natural selection, and as the author of ‘On the Origin of Species’. He lived at No. 2 Meadfoot House in Hesketh Crescent.
11. Adam Nevill

This is the man The Guardian called ‘Britain’s answer to Stephen King’. An award-winning author, renowned for the tensest, scariest writing you’re ever likely to read.
12. Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist best known for ’The Tale of Peter Rabbit’.
13. Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was one of the most well-known personalities of his day, regarded for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and sparkling conversation.
14. Seán O’Casey

Seán O’Casey was an Irish dramatist and memoirist, living through turbulent times including the 1913 Dublin Lock-out and Strike (starving with fellow workers), the 1916 Easter Rising, the Anglo-Irish War and the Civil War.
Aleister Crowley

The Great Beast 666, Perabduro, Ankh-f-n-khonsu, the wickedest man in the world, Aleister Crowley was a noted – and controversial – occultist. He wrote widely, founded his own religious order, and designed a set of tarot cards that are still used today.
Arthur Conan Doyle

Conan Doyle was a British writer – originally a physician – best known for Sherlock Holmes, one of the most vivid and enduring characters in English fiction.
Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert was a Scottish novelist and travel writer, most noted for Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and A Child’s Garden of Verses.
Rudyard Kipling

Still one of the most popular British authors and poets, Jungle Book author Rudyard Kipling and his wife lived at Rock House, Maidencombe from 1896-1898 on his return from America.
T.S Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot, the American-born poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, and literary and social critic Thomas Stearns Eliot, better known by his pen name TS Eliot, was “one of the twentieth century’s major poets”.

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