Martyn Clayton

About the researcher

I am a creative writer and research practitioner, currently exploring the persistence of autistic characterisation across the crime fiction genre.   

My PhD work focuses on Agatha Christie, the world’s bestselling author and someone whose influence on the genre cannot be overstated. As a Victorian who lived and wrote well into the second half of the 20th century, Christie was a woman of her class and time, but also someone curious about new ideas, different ways of thinking, and the intricacies of the human mind. 

I have a professional background in copywriting, and when I’m not reading or writing,  I can generally be found walking my dog or exploring the West Country. 

Research interests

  • Creative Writing 
  • Crime Fiction 
  • Disability Studies 
  • Medical Humanities 
  • Autistic Culture 
  • History of Psychiatry 

Researcher profile

PhD abstract

Thesis title

Little Grey Cells: Narratives of Autistic Presence in the Work of Agatha Christie – A Critical and Creative Study

Abstract

Autism is a contemporary diagnosis but traits and behaviours that can be coded as autistic have existed within human societies for millennia. They can be found in cave paintings, folk tales, diaries, and within fiction, with narratives of autistic presence often challenging the dominant medico-cultural framing of autism as a condition marked by absences in relation to the majority.  Existing as both a constellation of symptoms, and a unique way of being, autism now occupies a shape shifting, contradictory, and frequently misunderstood position within popular culture.  

With its origins in the ‘cold blooded’ enigma of Sherlock Holmes, the autistic detective trope, characterised by savant powers of observation and logic, has arguably become one of the chief canonical means via which non-autistic society makes sense of the autistic experience.  

Like Holmes, Agatha Christie’s Poirot exhibits a range of traits that can be read as autistic, but across Christie’s wide body of work, the recurrence of minds with a lack of standard patterns opens up the possibility of autistic interpretation, particularly by autistic readers themselves.  

Using both literary and disability studies, my critical work will explore how the playful, subversive conservatism of Christie’s characterisation can provide both structure and interpretive space for retrospective enquiry, creating scope for autistic readers to locate their experience within canonical elements of mainstream culture. 

My creative work will embody a narrative of autistic presence within a novel shaped by and reacting to the conventions of Golden Age and cosy crime, offering a protagonist who consciously engages with the autistic detective trope, while subverting mainstream expectations about autism. In contrast to the ‘neurotypical gaze’ that presents detectives such as Holmes as a mystery to be solved, I will centre the ‘autistic gaze’ throughout the narrative.  

Qualifications

Year Qualification Awarding body
2014 MA Creative Writing (Distinction)  York St John University 
2000 BA History & Religious Studies (1st Class Honours)  The Open University