The Importance of Being Poirot

Historian Professor Jeremy Black explains how Agatha Christie’s detective character Hercule Poirot is inseparable from the turbulent age in which the author lived. Black finds significant social commentary in Christie’s novels. He argues that the golden age of the detective novel was more than the triumph of a literary genre. It was also about how the challenge to address the problem of evil was accepted. Black is emeritus professor of history at the University of Exeter and author of books on British, European, and American political, diplomatic, and military history.