Arthur Hastings
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 and appears as a character in seven other Poirot novels, including the final one Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, 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 senior' though hardly looking 'his forty-five years'. He was educated at Eton.Prior to his service in World War I, Hastings was employed at Lloyd's of London.
Hastings meets Poirot in Belgium during the war several years before their meeting on 16 July 1916, at Styles Court, Essex, in the first of Christie's novels. Hastings was a Captain.
Hastings married Dulcie Duveen sometime after the events of 1923's The Murder on the Links. The couple moved to Argentina, where they ranched. They had several children, two sons and two daughters. One son joined the Navy, the other married and took over the running of the ranch. Grace married a soldier who during the events of Curtain was stationed in India. Judith was the child he "secretly..always loved best, though had never for one moment understood"; she attended university and worked for a research scientist. Hastings returned to England on several occasions for business purposes.
By the 1930s, Hastings wore a mustache.
By the events of Curtain, Hastings has been widowed.
Portrayals
Hastings has been portrayed on film and television by several actors, Richard Cooper in Black Coffee and Lord Edgware Dies ; Robert Morley in The Alphabet Murders ; Jonathan Cecil in three TV films – Thirteen at Dinner, Dead Man's Folly and Murder in Three Acts ; Dmitry Krylov in the Soviet film Mystery Endhauz ; 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, and by Simon Williams in Lord Edgware Dies, The ABC Murders, Peril at End House, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and Dumb Witness.
Himesh Patel voiced Hastings in Audible's adaptation of The Mysterious Affair at Styles and The ABC Murders.
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
- The Murder on the Links
- The [Big Four (novel)|The Big Four]
- Peril at End House
- Lord Edgware Dies – published in the U.S. as Thirteen at Dinner
- The A.B.C. Murders
- Dumb Witness – published in the U.S. as Poirot Loses a Client
- Curtain: Poirot's Last Case