By Ray Cleere

Agatha Christie was an English crime novelist, short-story writer and playwright. Her reputation rests on 66 detective novels and 15 short-story collections which have sold over two million copies, an amount surpassed only by the Bible and the works of Willam Shakespeare.

She is also the most translated individual author in the world. Her books were translated into more than 100 languages. Her works contain several regular characters with whom the public became familiar, including Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, Parker Pyne and Harley Quin.

Known as ‘The Queen of Mystery’, Agatha Christie was born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller on September 15th, 1890, in Torquay, Devon, in southwest England. The youngest of three siblings, she was educated at home by her mother who encouraged her to write. While working as a nurse during World War One, Agatha Christie began writing detective fiction. Her first novel, ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’, was published in 1920.

In October 1912, Agatha met Archibald ‘Archie’ Christie at a dance. The pair became engaged in 1913, just before Archie entered military training. At the outset of World War One, he was stationed in France and became a pilot. The couple married during his first period of leave, on Christmas Eve in 1914, and they relocated to London at the conclusion of the war.
Agatha and Archie had one child, Rosalind Hicks, born in August 1919. Their marriage began to crumble in 1926, when Archie revealed in August that he had begun a relationship with a woman named Nancy Neele and asked for a divorce.

In 1926 Agatha Christie’s mother died and she had an alarming response to the request for a divorce. In a move she never fully explained, Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days, and a national search began for the beloved writer. She was discovered registered in a hotel under the name of the woman her husband wished to marry.

In 1930 Agatha Christie married the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan; thereafter she spent several months each year on expeditions in Iraq and Syria with him. Max Mallowan and Agatha Christie were married for more than 45 years.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own