It is stated emphatically on the website of the Grand Hotel, sitting atop the Leas in Folkestone: `Agatha Christie wrote “Murder on the Orient Express” in the building” (https://grand-uk.com/). This story is duplicated in a number of other places. In the local history museum, in one of its displays; in articles by people writing about Folkestone and those associated with it (for an example, see Ella Alexander, Harper’s Bazaar, https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/travel/a27583394/why-folkestone-is-kents-most-underestimated-seaside-town/). Even the BBC refers to the writer’s links to the town – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34594854 – despite the fact that there are figures like H G Wells, Noel Coward, or Joseph Conrad with far more longstanding, tangible links there (see their entries).
Christie (1890-1976) was the 20th century’s most successful manufacturer of mysteries – she wrote 65 works in all. One cannot dissent from her success in simply selling books. According to her website, she is the best selling author of all time, selling a staggering two billion copies. If it were a question of Kent being a place where some of these works were rendered onto celluloid, then it would be an easy matter. `The Mirror Crack’d’ in 1980 saw A listers Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis descend on the small Wealden village of Smarden. The Poirot detective series subsequently have been filmed across the county. But did this well-travelled writer actually dwell long enough in Kent in her own life to have written any of her huge number of books here?
For the case of the `Murder on the Orient Express’, which was published in 1934, matters are complicated because there is a competitor to the Grand Hotel – the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul, Turkey. This claims to have been the location where it was penned – and even has the confidence to have a room named after the author – https://www.perapalace.com/en-US/room-type/281721. In addition, Christie’s biography by Janet Morgan does not mention any stay in Folkestone – nor does Christie in her own autobiography mention a stay there.
Christie had not just a professional interest in mystery and intrigue, but also a personal liking for this too – witness her 1926 disappearance. If anything, this helped her brand herself – in the time before awareness of the power of brands was limited. Maybe this confusion is almost deliberate. In any case, the whole question of where a piece was written is perhaps marginal. Writing is not a dramatic act. It involves someone sitting, somewhere, with a pen, or, in more recent times, a laptop or keyboard of some sort, and producing words. Some, like Conrad, may have dictated, giving the process a little more scope for drama. But unlike engaging in sport, or even being an artist before an easel, it is a hard thing to make a fuss about, on the surface at least. The interesting things are almost all hidden when someone writes.
Nor does Folkestone appear as a location in Christie’s work – particularly this one. The Orient Express took a number of different routes over its history. Some of these, sometimes, came to London. Some of them involved taking the ferry from the dock at Folkestone to Calais. But there were plenty of other options. And people mostly would have transited this place. In any case, the route Christie refers to in the book goes from Syria to Istanbul – nowhere remotely near Britain!
The more one thinks about this, to claim therefore, that a writer wrote one of their best known works at a particular place is therefore a puzzling idea. The claim or the need to make the claim, But it is not so much the content of the claim that is interesting, but the need to make the claim in the first place. Why does it matter where something was written, particularly when what is written has no discernible link with that particular place?
The assertion of Christie’s act of authorship in Folkestone has to sit alongside the other example in this class – Daniel Defoe and the myth of this writing `Robinson Crusoe’ in a room while in hiding in Hartley, West Kent (see the entry for `Daniel Defoe’). So, as in that case, while it may never be provable, and it may well end up being wholly untrue, it is worth pondering why these sort of links were made. Christie’s mastery of mystery appears even in an example as simple as this.