Arthur Hastings

Arthur Hastings
Hugh Fraser as Hastings
First appearance	The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
Last appearance	Curtain (1975)
Created by	Agatha Christie
Portrayed by	Richard Cooper Robert Morley Jonathan Cecil Dmitry Krylov Hugh Fraser Richard Armitage
In-universe information
Occupation	Army Captain (ex), secretary, rancher
Spouse	Dulcie Duveen (1923-unknown; her death)
Children	Two unnamed sons [1] Grace [1] Judith
Relatives	A sister Two grandsons
Nationality	British
Birth date and place	Late 1880s [2] United Kingdom

Captain Arthur J. M. Hastings, OBE, is a fictional character created by Agatha Christie as the companion-chronicler and best friend of the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. He is first introduced in Christie's 1920 novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles (originally written in 1916) and appears as a character in seven other Poirot novels, including the final one Curtain: Poirot's Last Case (1975), along with a play and many short stories. He is also the narrator of several of them.

Biography

The reader is able to pinpoint Hastings's approximate birthdate as the late 1880s from the first chapter of The Mysterious Affair at Styles , as he mentions that John Cavendish was 'a good fifteen years [his] senior' though hardly looking 'his forty-five years'. ^{[3] : 6–7} He was educated at Eton. ^[4]

Prior to his service in World War I, Hastings was employed at Lloyd's of London. ^{[3] : 14}

Hastings meets Poirot in Belgium during the war several years before their meeting on 16 July 1916, ^[5] at Styles Court, Essex, in the first of Christie's novels. ^[6] Hastings was a Captain. ^[7]

Hastings married Dulcie Duveen sometime after the events of 1923's The Murder on the Links . ^[8] The couple moved to Argentina, where they ranched. ^[9] They had several children, two sons and two daughters. ^[7] One son joined the Navy, the other married and took over the running of the ranch. ^[7] Grace married a soldier who during the events of Curtain was stationed in India. Judith was the child he "secretly..always loved best, though [he] had never for one moment understood"; she attended university and worked for a research scientist. ^[7] Hastings returned to England on several occasions for business purposes. ^[9]

By the 1930s, Hastings wore a mustache. ^[10]

By the events of Curtain, Hastings has been widowed. ^[7]

Portrayals

Hastings has been portrayed on film and television by several actors, Richard Cooper in Black Coffee (1931) and Lord Edgware Dies (1934); Robert Morley in The Alphabet Murders (1965); Jonathan Cecil in three TV films – Thirteen at Dinner (1985), Dead Man's Folly (1986) and Murder in Three Acts (1986); Dmitry Krylov in the Soviet film Mystery Endhauz (1989, directed by Vadim Derbenyov); and Hugh Fraser, who portrayed Hastings alongside David Suchet's Poirot in 43 of the 70 episodes of Agatha Christie's Poirot . He is also a main character in the anime Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple .

In the BBC Radio 4 dramatisations starring John Moffatt as Hercule Poirot, Captain Hastings was played by Jeremy Clyde in Murder on the Links (1990), ^[11] and by Simon Williams in Lord Edgware Dies (1992), The ABC Murders (2000), Peril at End House (2000), The Mysterious Affair at Styles (2005), and Dumb Witness (2006). ^[12]

Himesh Patel voiced Hastings in Audible's adaptation of The Mysterious Affair at Styles and The ABC Murders. ^{[13] [14]}

The Hastings novels

Hastings narrates the majority of the short stories featuring Poirot, but appears in only eight of the novels, seven of which were written before 1940:

• The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1916 but published in 1920)
• The Murder on the Links (1923)
• The Big Four (1927)
• Peril at End House (1932)
• Lord Edgware Dies (1933) – published in the U.S. as Thirteen at Dinner
• The A.B.C. Murders (1936)
• Dumb Witness (1937) – published in the U.S. as Poirot Loses a Client
• Curtain: Poirot's Last Case (written in the early 1940s, published in 1975)

Hastings is the narrator of all stories in Poirot Investigates (1924), a collection of short stories. Hastings is also present in Christie's play Black Coffee (1930) and its novelisation alongside Poirot.

See also

• Ariadne Oliver

References

1. Curtain: Poirot's Last Case
2. Christie, Agatha. The Mysterious Affair at Styles. pp. 6–7.
3. Christie, Agatha (1920). The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
4. Christie, Agatha. Dumb Witness. p. 81.
5. Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, Chapter 1.
6. The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Chapter 2.
7. Christie, Agatha (1975). Curtain: Poirot's Last Case.
8. Christie, Agatha (1923). Murder on the Links.
9. Christie, Agatha (1927). The Big Four.
10. Peril at End House, Chapter 6.
11. "Saturday-Night Theatre: Agatha Christie's Murder on the Links". BBC Genome: Radio Times. BBC. 2020. Archived from the original on 23 October 2014. Retrieved 31 March 2020.
12. "Afternoon Play: Agatha Christie's Dumb Witness". BBC Genome: Radio Times. BBC. 2020. Archived from the original on 26 July 2020. Retrieved 31 March 2020. See also Lord Edgware Dies, The ABC Murders, Peril at End House, and The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
13. Shafer, Ellise (2 October 2024). "Peter Dinklage, Jessica Gunning, Himesh Patel and More to Star in Audible Adaptation of Agatha Christie's 'The Mysterious Affair at Styles' (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved 3 October 2024.
14. "The ABC Murders, An Audible Original" . Retrieved 27 October 2025.