Life-size Agatha Christie statue soon to be unveiled in Wallingford

Video report by ITV Meridian's Natalie Verney

What’s thought to be the UK’s first life-size statue of Agatha Christie is just three months away from being completed.

Agatha Christie is the world’s best selling author of all time. Some of her most famous creations include Poirot and Miss Marple.

The detective novel writer lived in Wallingford for 42 years from 1934 to 1976.

Fans from around the world flock to the town to visit her home, Winterbrook House, and her grave in nearby Cholsey.

Sculptor, Ben Twiston-Davies, said it's a huge responsibility to create a statue that encompasses her personality: "There's always terrible kind of agonies when I'm in the studio just working on the piece, trying to get it right.

Have I got the exact gaze in her eye how I want it? And that's never easy, but it shouldn't be."

It's taken four years of planning, and one year of designing and modelling to reach this stage.

Ben continued: "Agatha's sitting on a bench as it were, reading a book. But in fact she's looked up from the book she's reading as if she's just noticed something interesting across the park.

So she's kind of seen something, maybe like a clue to a mystery, and she's looked up. She's holding in her lap a book.

But she's holding it closed just before the ending of the book which feels to me like a good sort of symbol of her narrative technique which is to with-hold the ending and the surprise of who committed the murder."

Now Ben has perfected his clay model, it's been sent off to undergo three months of bronze casting before it's complete.

The statue will be unveiled on 9th September by her grandson, Mathew Prichard, in Kine Croft, opposite the Wallingford Museum.

She'll be sat on a bench, gazing out across the park, allowing visitors to sit beside her and even take a selfie with the 'Queen of Crime' herself!

Stephen Beatty, from Wallingford Town Council said: "I hope it brings jobs and I hope it brings tourism. I think it's going to be really supportive to local businesses. It's going to up our numbers and it will hopefully anchor our tourist offering."

The statue, which has been funded by an arts grant, has cost £120,000.