Thompson, however, has made more imaginative use of the material. Janet Morgan's 1984 biography was written at the behest of the novelist's daughter Rosalind Hicks (now deceased), who gave Morgan the freedom of the archive at Greenway, her mother's last home. The publisher's claim that this biography has been written with "unique access" to Christie's diaries, letters and family is a slight exaggeration. She does, however, do an extremely thorough job with what there is. One would not, perhaps, expect someone whose main creative output was so rigidly circumscribed to have much in the way of personal hinterland, and Laura Thompson admits this. Even the books set abroad (she was well travelled) have little more in the way of local colour than a few camels, pyramids and fez-wearing servants. Christie conjures it up with very little in the way of description - she is not an observant writer. It is caught in time somewhere between the 1920s and the 1950s, and the sun has never set upon it. It is a vision of England as a well-manicured village where properly spoken people in manor houses are always dressing for dinner, playing bridge, repressing their emotions and being served tea by faintly comical maids. Christieworld, even more than Blytonworld or Wodehouseworld, has been exported all over the globe. Christie is a lodestone for present-day writers and critics, attracting and repelling in equal measure.
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