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Christie: The Undisputed Queen of Crime...

HER LIFE

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquary in Devon on 15th September 1890 to Frederick Alvah Millier (an American stockbroker) and Clarissa Margaret Boehmer (the daughter of a British army captain). She had a sister eleven years her senior and a brother ten years her senior. Her father died when she was 11 and she was home-schooled by her mother until the age of 16 when she was sent to Mrs Dryden's finishing school in Paris.

She married her first husband, Colonel Archibald Christie when she was 24 and divorced him 14 years later as the marriage was an unhappy one. The couple had one child, a daughter, Rosalind Hicks. During this marriage Christie published her first novel in 1920, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Two years before her divorce in 1928 Christie disappeared for 10 days, causing a lot of press attention with speculation rife as to her whereabouts. She was found at a hotel in Harrogate checked in under the name of the woman whom her husband had admitted to having an affair with and it was claimed that she had a breakdown bought on by her husband's cheating and mother's death. To this day it is not known if this was true or if it was a publicity stunt.

In 1930 Christie remarried. Her second husband was an archaeologist called Sir Max Mallowan who was 14 years her junior and although he also had numerous affairs she stay married to him till her death. Christie travelled extensively with her husband and these travels contributed towards backgrounds for her novels, several of which were set in the Middle East. She used real life experiences in her books, e.g. during World War I she worked first in a hospital and then at a pharmacy, learning about poisons to use facts about them in her books.
In 1971 Christie was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

HER DEATH

Agatha Christie died on 12th January 1976 in Berkshire at the age of 85 of natural causes. Sir Max Mallowan married his mistress, Barbara Parker a year later. Her daughter Rosalind died 28 years later in 2004 leaving a son Mathew Prichard.

HER LEGACY

Christie created two very memorable detectives in her novels, namely the Belgian detective with the "little grey cells" Hercule Poirot and the intuitive and likeable elderly spinster Miss Jane Marple.

Poirot was first introduced in The Mysterious Affair at Styles and appeared in a further 30 or so novels and over 50 short stories and Miss Marple first appeared in The Murder At The

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