Unravelling the Mystery of Agatha Christie's Ealing Connections
Jonathan Oates tells how the original Ms Marple lived on Uxbridge Road
The cover of Dr Jonathan Oates' new book
June 19, 2024
Leading local historian, Dr Jonathan Oates, has turned to the subject of Agatha Christie for his latest book.
It may seem like a surprising choice, but the crime writer has a number of connections with the Ealing area.
Her ‘auntie grannie’ was Mrs Margaret Miller who lived in a house, now long gone, at 99 Uxbridge Road. Agatha often visited and Mrs Miller helped inspire the character of Miss Marple who always thought the worst of people and was usually right.
Agatha had her first work, an anti-tram poem, published in a local Ealing newspaper. She also set some of her stories in Ealing and referred to it often in her autobiography with Haven Green and Castlebar Road featuring.
In Ealing cemeteries are tombs to her parents, her sister and to Mrs Miller.
The book is illustrated and gives an overview of Ealing history and Ealing murders at the time that Agatha Miller as she then was, knew it, between 1890 and 1914, when the term Queen of the suburbs was first coined by Charles Jones the borough surveyor.
Another local link is that David Suchet once lived in the borough before he became Hercule Poirot.
Agatha Christie and Ealing: Queen of Crime and Queen of the Suburbs is available on Amazon in paperback for £6.99.
The author is currently writing, with another historian, a book about the true crime in Agatha's books.
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