David Suchet: my ‘total faith’ in Jesus

Think of Agatha Christie’s dapper, fastidious, Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, and the image that comes most easily to mind is that of the British actor, David Suchet.

Suchet made the part very much his own, starring in 13 series – a total of 70 episodes – of the Independent Television series, ‘Agatha Christie’s Poirot’ from 1989 to 2013.

Now in a new autobiographical book, ‘Behind the Lens’, Suchet – a keen photographer – has stepped the other side of the camera to give us a pictorial view of the events and characters that have shaped his life. Interestingly, he talks about his Christian faith, which he approaches with the same exactitude of study as he gives to the characters he plays on stage and screen.

Coming from a mixed Jewish/Christian background, Suchet grew up agnostic (though never quite, he says, atheist) until one day, when he was about 40 years old, he was in a hotel in America lying in a bath, thinking about the afterlife and the resurrection. He was puzzled – being an agnostic – that his thoughts should turn that way, but he decided to investigate further by purchasing a New Testament.

Not knowing quite where to begin, but having always been fascinated by the Roman Empire, he started at the book of Romans.

He writes: “I didn’t understand much of it but halfway through I came across a passage that spoke of a way of life I wanted to be part of… it was a world view I’d been searching for ever since the 1960s. Suddenly, I’d found something… I felt I’d been looking for perhaps most of my adult life… a coherent philosophy I could really relate to. Christianity offered me that. The Christian worldview is love.”

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