Hercule Poirot's Real-Life Model May Have Been Discovered!

I came across an article in The Guardian titled Hercule Poirot's real-life model may have been detected in Torquay by Alison Flood. This is exciting news for me to learn as I'm an Agatha Christie fan. I've read several of Agatha Christie novels and my favorite fictional character created by Ms. Christie is Hercule Poirot. So, to learn that Hercule Poirot may have indeed been modeled on a real life person is an intriguing factoid to learn!

In the above mentioned article, Alison Flood writes the following in her article:

Retired Devon Navy commander Michael Clapp was researching his family history when he discovered that hundreds of Belgian refugees came to the region after the war started. One of them was retired gendarme Jacques Hornais, whose name was recorded by Clapp's grandmother Alice Graham Clapp as having been billeted with a Mrs Potts Chatto. 

"Further down the road [from Mrs Potts Chatto] lived Agatha Christie's family in another quite large house. They obviously knew each other socially," said Clapp. "The coincidence came when I went to Torquay, and someone at the museum dug out an old newspaper article saying that Mrs Potts Chatto had held a meeting to raise money and clothing for the Belgian refugees, and a young girl played the piano there. She turned out to be Agatha Christie." 

Clapp said that Christie had "always said that her inspiration for Poirot came from a Belgian refugee, and he was the only gendarme or detective of any kind I know of to have been sent there. So it's not proof, but it's a pretty good coincidence".

Click on the top link to read the full story. 

Until my next post, happy reading!