Agatha Christie

Outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare, Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time. She is best known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, as well as the world’s longest-running play – The Mousetrap. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and a billion in translation.

Agatha Christie's Life

1890 - 1916 (The Early Years)
• Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on 15 September 1890 in Torquay, Devon, South West England into a comfortably well off middle class family. What made her upbringing unusual, even for its time, was that she was home schooled largely by her father, an American. Her mother, Clara, who was an excellent storyteller, did not want her to learn to read until she was eight but Agatha, bored and as the only child at home (she was a much loved “afterthought” with two older siblings) taught herself to read by the age of five.
1916 – 1924 (Poirot is Born)
• It was during the First World War that Agatha turned to writing detective stories. Her debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles took some time to finish and even longer to find a publisher.She first worked out her plot and then “found” her characters on a tram in Torquay. Her new found expertise in poisons was also put to good use. The murderer’s use of poison was so well described that when the book was eventually published Agatha received an unprecedented honour for a writer of fiction - a review in the Pharmaceutical Journal.
1925 – 1928 (A Difficult Start)
• It was a difficult time for Agatha – her mother had died and she was often alone clearing out the family home in Torquay and struggling to write the next novel for Collins. Archie and Agatha’s relationship, strained by the sadness in her life, broke down when Archie fell in love with a fellow golfer and friend of the family, Nancy Neale. Archie was a keen golfer; Agatha not.
1929 – 1938 (A New Start)
• One of Agatha’s lifelong ambitions had been to travel on the Orient Express and her first journey took place in the autumn of 1928. Persuaded by a chance dinner party conversation, Agatha set off for Baghdad and from there travelled to the archaeological site at Ur where she became friends with the Woolleys who ran the dig. Invited back the following year she met the twenty-five year old archaeologist-in-training Max Mallowan who was to become her second husband. Asked by Katherine Woolley to show Agatha the sites, each found the other's company relaxing. Their relationship was forged by travel – Max could “rough it” and so could Agatha. Max proposed on the last evening of his visit to Agatha's family home of Ashfield, they were married on September 11th 1930 at St Cuthbert's Church in Edinburgh, and Agatha only slightly reduced her age in her new passport acquired for the honeymoon. Max returned to the Woolley’s dig – for the last time alone – and Agatha to London and writing. Thus began a productive and recurring annual writing and travelling routine for Agatha and Max: summers at Ashfield with Rosalind, Christmas with her sister’s family at Abney Hall, late autumn and spring on digs and the rest of the year in London and their country house in Winterbrook, on the edge of Wallingford, Oxfordshire.
1939 – 1945 (The War Years)
• World War II saw Max get a wartime job in Cairo - using his languages to assist the war effort while Agatha remained in England, writing and also volunteering at the Dispensary at University College Hospital in London.
1946 – 1976 (The Later Years)
• By 1945 and the return of Max with the end of the war, Agatha had realised the tax implications of writing so much. She became less prolific and now in her mid 50s enjoyed a slower pace of life; like the rest of the country the last years of the 40s were full of shortages – a long, chilly, depressing haul. Food rationing did not end until 1954.