She based at least two of her stories on the hall: the short story The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, and the novel After the Funeral. The Greenway Estate in Devon, acquired by the couple as a summer residence in 1938, is now in the care of the National Trust.Ĭhristie often stayed at Abney Hall in Cheshire, which was owned by her brother-in-law, James Watts. The hotel maintains Christie's room as a memorial to the author. Christie's 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express was written in the Hotel Pera Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, the southern terminus of the railway. Other novels (such as And Then There Were None) were set in and around Torquay, where she was born. Christie's travels with Mallowan contributed background to several of her novels set in the Middle East. Their marriage was especially happy in the early years and remained so until Christie's death in 1976.Ĭhristie frequently used familiar settings for her stories. In 1930, Christie married archaeologist Max Mallowan (Sir Max from 1968) after joining him in an archaeological dig. Despite a massive manhunt, she was not found for eleven days. Her disappearance caused an outcry from the public, many of whom were admirers of her novels. That same evening Agatha disappeared from her home, leaving behind a letter for her secretary saying that she was going to Yorkshire. On 8 December 1926 the couple quarreled, and Archie Christie left their house, Styles, in Sunningdale, Berkshire, to spend the weekend with his mistress at Godalming, Surrey. In late 1926, Agatha's husband, Archie, revealed that he was in love with another woman, Nancy Neele, and wanted a divorce. During her first marriage, Agatha published six novels, a collection of short stories, and a number of short stories in magazines. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, came out in 1920. During the Second World War, she worked as a pharmacy assistant at University College Hospital, London, acquiring a good knowledge of poisons which feature in many of her novels. During the First World War, she worked at a hospital as a nurse later working at a hospital pharmacy, a job that influenced her work, as many of the murders in her books are carried out with poison. The Millers had two other children: Margaret Frary Miller (1879–1950), called Madge, who was eleven years Agatha's senior, and Louis Montant Miller (1880–1929), called Monty, ten years older than Agatha.īefore marrying and starting a family in London, she had served in a Devon hospital during the First World War, tending to troops coming back from the trenches. The youngest of three children of the Miller family. She atuhored The Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the history of modern theater. Of the most enduring figures in crime literature, she created Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. According to Index Translationum, people translated her works into 103 languages at least, the most for an individual author. Her books sold more than a billion copies in the English language and a billion in translation. This best-selling author of all time wrote 66 crime novels and story collections, fourteen plays, and six novels under a pseudonym in romance. More than seventy detective novels of British writer Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie include The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), and And Then There Were None (1939) she also wrote plays, including The Mousetrap (1952). Agatha Christie also wrote romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, and was occasionally published under the name Agatha Christie Mallowan.

Agatha christie ordeal by innocence