Literary Lives:
Agatha Christie
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on
15 September 1890 in Torquay, Devon, into
a middle-class family who home-schooled
her. At age five, Agatha taught herself to
read, although her mother had wanted her
to wait until she was eight. Once she could
read, Agatha devoured popular children’s
stories of the time: The Railway Children by
Edith Nesbitt and Little Women by Louisa
May Alcott among others. She had a very
creative mind, inventing imaginary friends
and composing poetry at a young age.
Agatha was very shy though, all her life, and
avoided attention wherever possible.
First Husband
In 1912, she met Archie Christie, who was a
qualified aviator. After a whirlwind romance,
they married in December 1914 but were only
able to meet infrequently during the war.
Archie was stationed in France and Agatha
was a voluntary nurse working in a Red Cross
hospital in Torquay. Their married life began
properly after the end of the war and she gave
birth to their only daughter, Rosalind, in 1919.
First Publishing Contract
Newly married and volunteering with the
Voluntary Aid Detachment, Christie took the
opportunity to study to become a qualified
pharmaceutical assistant. At the same time,
she began writing detective stories. Her first
novel was titled The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
Its plot made good use of her new expertise
in poisons but it took her a long time to find
a publisher. After being rejected many times,
the novel was accepted in 1919 by John Lane,
who contracted Christie to write five more
books. For her first novel, she earned a mere
£25, worth only around £1,000 today. She
later left Lane for better terms with other
publishers. Interestingly though, it was Lane
who suggested a change of ending to Christie’s
first novel. Originally, she had written a
climactic courtroom scene. Lane wanted her to
write a scene whereby all involved gathered in
the library for the final whodunnit revelation.
This innovative ending became the format
adopted for the vast majority of all Christie’s
subsequent stories.
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Hercule Poirot
The Mysterious Affair at Styles was the first novel
to feature the Belgian detective character of
Hercule Poirot. During the First World War there
were Belgian refugees in most parts of the English
countryside. Christie thought that a Belgian
refugee, formerly an expert policeman, would
make an interesting detective. Christie described
him as ‘an extraordinary-looking little man. He was
hardly more than five feet four inches, but carried
himself with great dignity. His head was exactly
the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a
little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and
military.’ Poirot would go on to feature in a further
33 novels and more than 50 short stories. A
successful television series called Agatha Christie’s
Poirot would run from 1989 to 2013. Christie herself
actually discouraged publishers from having any
representation of Poirot on book jackets, so that
her readers could imagine him themselves. Since
the late 1920s, Poirot has been reimagined and
depicted on stage, screen and radio by over 35
actors. Twice in her life, it is reported that Agatha
Christie ‘saw’ the living embodiment of Poirot; once
having lunch in the Savoy and once on a boat in
the Canary Islands. When the character of Hercule
Poirot died in 1975’s Curtain, he received a front-
page obituary in The New York Times.
Evil Under the Sun
Many detective novels were to follow the
success of The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
Christie’s plots were complicated and
brilliant. In one novel, intriguingly titled
Evil Under the Sun, Poirot takes a holiday in
Devon. During his stay, he notices a young
woman who is flirtatious and attractive,
but not well-liked by a number of guests.
One morning, the woman heads out for
a secret rendezvous. By midday, she is
found dead by other guests out rowing. An
examination by the local police surgeon
reveals she had been strangled. Poirot
invites everyone to a picnic, which he
uses to secretly observe their behaviour
and discovers that the woman had been
murdered to prevent her husband learning
that she had been conned into investing
a large inheritance. The murder was well-
planned, including the manipulation of
time, posing as a dead body and the last-
minute application of sun-tan lotion!
The late actor, Peter Ustinov, played the
part of the loveable Poirot in the 1982
film version. Previously, Ustinov had taken
on the same role in the film version of
Death on the Nile in 1978, also starring
Mia Farrow.
After the First World War
Following the war, Christie continued to
write, experimenting with different types
of thriller and murder-mystery stories
and creating new detectives in the central
roles. First, she invented Tommy and
Tuppence, and then Miss Marple quickly
followed. In 1922, leaving Rosalind with
her nurse and her mother, she and Archie
travelled across the British Empire. Archie’s
boss proved the inspiration for Sir Eustace
Pedlar in The Man in the Brown Suit, set in
Africa. Around this time she found a more
generous publisher, known later as Harper
Collins.
Sadly, Christie’s marriage broke down in
1926. Her mother also passed away and
unsurprisingly she began to struggle with
her mental health.
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A Mystery of Her Own
One night in early December 1926, Agatha
left Rosalind and the house to the care
of the maids. The next morning her car
was found abandoned several miles away
and a nationwide search got underway.
The press and public wondered what on
earth had happened to her. The truth
was that Agatha had somehow travelled
to the Harrogate Spa Hotel. Having been
recognised by the hotel staff, who alerted
the police, she did not recognise Archie
when he came to meet her. Apparently
suffering from amnesia, Agatha had no
recollection of who she was. Agatha never
spoke of this time with friends or family.
Second Husband
Christie travelled on the Orient Express in the
autumn of 1928, fulfilling a lifelong ambition.
Whilst attending a dinner party, she was
persuaded to visit an archaeological site in
Baghdad. Invited back the following year, she
met the 25-year-old archaeologist-in-training
Max Mallowan, who would become her second
husband. The influence of the Middle East
can be seen in books such as Murder on the
Orient Express, Death on the Nile, Murder in
Mesopotamia, Appointment With Death and They
Came to Baghdad. During the Second World
War, missing her husband and with external
entertainment more limited in wartime, she
wrote extensively, producing classics such
as And Then There Were None, The Body in the
Library and The Moving Finger. All these stories
contained the new detective character, Miss
Jane Marple of St Mary Mead.
Miss Marple
The character was vaguely based on
Agatha Christie’s own grandmother and
her grandmother’s friends. Jane Marple is
described as ‘an attractive, thin, old lady,
with a twinkle in her blue eyes’. Miss Marple
first appeared in six short stories, written
between 1927 and 1928. The first full-length
novel, written and published in 1930, was
The Murder at the Vicarage. It was one of
the first titles in Collins’ famous Crime Club
series. Miss Marple would go on to feature
in a total of 12 novels. Unlike Hercule
Poirot, Miss Marple had no background in
police work; her unique understanding of
human nature and wickedness comes from
her careful observance of village life. And
from being a bit of a busy body! Almost all
of the Miss Marple mysteries are set in an
English village or country house, reflecting
Miss Marple’s age-related need to stay
local. Seeing Joan Hickson playing the part
of a spinster in a stage production, Christie
wrote to the actress expressing the hope
that ‘one day you will play my Miss Marple’.
Her wish came true, and Joan Hickson
starred as the spinster sleuth in the long-
running BBC series.
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Murder at the Vicarage
Colonel Protheroe is a wealthy magistrate and
active in the church. Yet almost no one in his
village, St Mary Mead, likes him. Vicar Leonard
Clement is insulted by him, Protheroe’s own
daughter, Lettice, hates him, and both wish
him dead. To make matters worse, the vicar
witnesses Mrs Anne Protheroe embracing
another man. That evening, the Colonel is
found murdered in the vicar’s study; having
already arranged to meet with Protheroe at the
vicarage, Clement discovers him bent over at
his desk, having been fatally shot in the head.
Miss Marple’s first case in novel form includes
a strange note, a shot that nobody hears, a
suitcase carried into the woods at midnight
and a series of false confessions. Miss Marple
Did You Know?
To try to control the fate of both her key
detectives, Agatha Christie wrote Poirot’s
death story Curtain in 1945 – along with the
death story of Miss Marple – and included
both stories in her will. She even kept the
manuscripts in a bank vault to ensure they
were preserved. Christie was determined
that nobody else would be able to write
their stories if she did not survive the Blitz!
is dismissed as an old gossip by the police but
she is the one to solve the mystery in the end.
The Mousetrap
Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap is the longest-
running show in the world. It opened in
November 1952 at the Ambassadors Theatre
in London and moved to St. Martin’s Theatre
in March 1974, where it is still playing to this
day. The Mousetrap began as a short radio play,
commissioned by the BBC to celebrate the 80th
birthday of Queen Mary, wife of KIng George
V. It was broadcast on 30 May 1947 under the
name Three Blind Mice. Its plot was based on
the case of Dennis O’Neill, a 12-year-old boy
who was violently beaten to death by his foster
father in 1945. His gruesome death made
headlines, and the foster father was sentenced
to six years in prison. At the end of each stage
performance, the audience is always asked to
‘keep the secret of whodunnit locked in your
heart’! This is how the mystery of The Mousetrap
has remained concealed for so long.
Who Was Mary Westmacott?
Her invention of the pseudonym, Mary
Westmacott , gave Christie more literary
freedom to experiment with other styles
of writing. As Westmacott, Christie wrote
six novels within what we would call the
romance genre. Some of these stories
reflected the pain of her own private
life and the destructive nature of love.
Westmacott was exposed as Agatha
Christie in 1949 by The Sunday Times, after
more than 15 years of secrecy.
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Did You Know?
In 1971 Christie was made a Dame (DBE)
by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions
to literature. A writer during the ‘golden
age of detective fiction’, Christie has
herself been called the queen – the ’Queen
of Crime’, that is.
Death of a Best-Selling Author
Christie’s last public appearance before her
death was in 1974 in London, following the
premiere of Murder on the Orient Express.
Christie did not often like film adaptations of
her novels but did give her approval of this one.
Her Majesty the Queen attended the premiere!
In an interview shortly before her death,
Christie was asked how she wanted to be
remembered. ‘Well, I would like it to be said
that I was a good writer of detective and thriller
stories,’ was her reply. Ian Rankin, a successful
writer himself, was a huge fan of the novelist
and once said, ‘The thing about Agatha Christie
is she has done it all. She has got books where
everybody did it, nobody did it, the narrator did
it, every possible eventuality. Christie was the
beginning and the end of the crime novel.’
Christie’s health had begun to decline during
the 1970s. On 12 January 1976 she died from
natural causes at her home in Oxfordshire. The
two West End theatres in which her plays were
running dimmed their outside lights as a mark
of respect.
Did You Know?
Agatha Christie was the president of the
Detection Club between 1957 and1976
but only accepted the position on the
understanding that she would never have
to make a speech!
Agatha Christie Today
Christie’s novels continue to be as popular
as ever. Altogether, she wrote 75 novels,
including 66 detective novels, and 14 short
story collections. She is perhaps the world’s
most famous mystery writer. Tony Medawar,
organiser of the International Agatha Christie
Festival, says, ‘People still enjoy the way
Christie winds the clues in and out of the
narrative and plays tricks on the reader, which
work on screen stage and on paper. Also, she
writes in an incredibly accessible way. I’ve met
people from all around the world who were
taught English and learned English by reading
Agatha Christie.’ She was even voted the best
crime writer of all time by the Crime Writers’
Association in 2013, proof that her detective
fiction still appeals to modern readers. Her
books continue to sell in the millions every
year. She is behind only Shakespeare in the
best-selling authors of all time list.
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