Agatha Christie’s Mysterious Dartmoor

The Agatha Christie Festival, with thanks to Festival Friends Ugbrooke House and The Moorland Hotel, are very pleased to offer this special afternoon. Aboard a vintage double-decker bus, we will visit places that helped transform the young Agatha into the bestselling novelist she became.

Timetable for the day

Arrival at Ugbrooke House

A rare opportunity to walk the very floorboards where Agatha danced and to view the guestbook bearing Archie Christie's signature.

In 1912, Lady Mabel Clifford, renowned for her celebrated house parties, hosted a grand ball at Ugbrooke House for the Officers of the Exeter Garrison. To ensure an evening of lively company, a young Agatha Miller was invited to attend. That night, she was introduced to Archibald (Archie) Christie, a dashing young officer with whom she danced several times. Recalling the evening in her autobiography, she wrote:

"We got on very well; he danced splendidly, and I danced several more times with him. I enjoyed the evening thoroughly."

The couple’s courtship led to their marriage on Christmas Eve, 1914, in Bristol. Though their union was not to last, their first meeting remains immortalized within the historic rooms of Ugbrooke House.

Arrive at the Moorland Hotel for a cream tea and talk from Victoria Dowd

During the First World War, with Archie away, Agatha wrote what would become her first published novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Trying to complete the novel, she stayed at the Moorland Hotel on Dartmoor, walking the moors every afternoon for inspiration.

During the cream tea, Devon-based author, Victoria Dowd, whose latest book, Death in the Aviary, is set on Dartmoor, will give a talk on Agatha and Dartmoor.

Victoria is the award-winning author of the Smart Woman’s Mystery series and has been shortlisted for the CWA Dagger. Her novel, The Smart Woman’s Guide to Murder, won The People’s Book Prize for fiction and was In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel’s Book of the Year. Her historical crime novel, Death in the Aviary, is the first book in her new series, The Blood Chronicles.
Victoria writes the Adapting Agatha blog. She is head of the London Crime Writers’ Association and was a criminal defence barrister for many years.