2. Life and career
Early life and first marriage
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Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay, Devon, England, UK. Her mother, Clarissa
Margaret Boehmer, was the daughter of a British Army captain but had been sent as a child to
live with her own mother's sister, who was the second wife of a wealthy American. Eventually
Margaret married her stepfather's son from his first marriage, Frederick Alvah Miller, an American
stockbroker. Thus, the two women Agatha called "Grannie" were sisters. Despite her father's
nationality as a "New Yorker" and her aunt's relation to the Pierpont Morgans, Agatha never
claimed United States citizenship or connection.
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Agatha was the youngest of three. The Millers had two other children: Margaret Frary Miller
(1879–1950), called Madge, who was 11 years Agatha's senior, and Louis Montant Miller (1880–
1929), called Monty, 10 years older than Agatha. Later, in her autobiography, Agatha would refer
to her brother as "an amiable scapegrace of a brother".
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Agatha described herself as having had a very happy childhood. While she never received any
formal schooling, she did not lack an education. Her mother believed children should not learn to
read until they were eight, but Agatha taught herself to read at four. Her father taught her
mathematics via story problems, and the family played question-and-answer games much like
today's Trivial Pursuit. She had piano lessons, which she liked, and dance lessons, which she did
not. When she could not learn French through formal instruction, the family hired a young woman
who spoke nothing but French to be her nanny and companion. Agatha made up stories from a
very early age and invented a number of imaginary friends and paracosms. One of them, "The
School", with a dozen or so imaginary young women of widely varying temperaments, lasted well
into her adult years.
3. Life and career
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During the First World War, she worked at a
hospital as a nurse; she liked the profession,
calling it "one of the most rewarding professions
that anyone can follow".She later worked at a
hospital pharmacy, a job that influenced her
work, as many of the murders in her books are
carried out with poison.
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Despite a turbulent courtship, on Christmas Eve
1914 Agatha married Archibald Christie, an
aviator in the Royal Flying Corps. The couple
had one daughter, Rosalind Hicks. They
divorced in 1928, two years after Christie
discovered her husband was having an affair.
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Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles,
came out in 1920. During her marriage to
Christie, Agatha published six novels, a
collection of short stories, and a number of short
stories in magazines.
4. Disappearance
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In late 1926, Agatha's husband, Archie, revealed that he was in
love with another woman, Nancy Neele, and wanted a divorce. 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. That same
evening Agatha disappeared from her home, leaving behind a
letter for her secretary saying that she was going to Yorkshire. Her
disappearance caused an outcry from the public, many of whom
were admirers of her novels. Despite a massive manhunt, she was
not found for 11 days.
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On 19 December 1926 Agatha was identified as a guest at the
Swan Hydropathic Hotel (now the Old Swan Hotel) in Harrogate,
Yorkshire, where she was registered as 'Mrs Teresa Neele' from
Cape Town. Agatha gave no account of her disappearance.
Although two doctors had diagnosed her as suffering from
psychogenic fugue, opinion remains divided as to the reasons for
her disappearance. One suggestion is that she had suffered a
nervous breakdown brought about by a natural propensity for
depression, exacerbated by her mother's death earlier that year
and the discovery of her husband's infidelity. Public reaction at the
time was largely negative, with many believing it a publicity stunt
while others speculated she was trying to make the police believe
her husband had killed her.
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Author Jared Cade interviewed numerous witnesses and relatives
for his sympathetic biography, Agatha Christie and the Missing
Eleven Days, and provided a substantial amount of evidence to
suggest that Christie planned the entire disappearance to
embarrass her husband, never thinking it would escalate into the
melodrama it became.
5. Second marriage and later life
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In 1930, Christie married archaeologist Max Mallowan (Sir
Max from 1968) after joining him in an archaeological dig.
Their marriage was especially happy in the early years and
remained so until Christie's death in 1976. In 1977, Mallowan
married his longtime associate, Barbara Parker.
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Christie frequently used settings which were familiar to her for
her stories. Christie's travels with Mallowan contributed
background to several of her novels set in the Middle East.
Other novels (such as And Then There Were None) were set
in and around Torquay, where she was born. 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. The hotel maintains Christie's room as a memorial to
the author. The Greenway Estate in Devon, acquired by the
couple as a summer residence in 1938, is now in the care of
the National Trust.
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Christie often stayed at Abney Hall in Cheshire, which was
owned by her brother-in-law, James Watts. She based at least
two of her stories on the hall: the short story The Adventure of
the Christmas Pudding, which is in the story collection of the
same name, and the novel After the Funeral. "Abney became
Agatha's greatest inspiration for country-house life, with all the
servants and grandeur which have been woven into her plots.
The descriptions of the fictional Chimneys, Stoneygates, and
other houses in her stories are mostly Abney in various
forms."
6. Second marriage and later life
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During the Second World War, Christie worked in the pharmacy at University College Hospital, London, where
she acquired a knowledge of poisons that she put to good use in her post-war crime novels. For example, the use
of thallium as a poison was suggested to her by UCH Chief Pharmacist Harold Davis (later appointed Chief
Pharmacist at the UK Ministry of Health), and in The Pale Horse, published in 1961, she employed it to dispatch a
series of victims, the first clue to the murder method coming from the victims’ loss of hair. So accurate was her
description of thallium poisoning that on at least one occasion it helped solve a case that was baffling doctors.
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To honour her many literary works, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1956
New Year Honours. The next year, she became the President of the Detection Club. In the 1971 New Year
Honours she was promoted Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, three years after her husband
had been knighted for his archeological work in 1968. They were one of the few married couples where both
partners were honoured in their own right. From 1968, due to her husband's knighthood, Christie could also be
styled as Lady Agatha Mallowan, or simply Lady Mallowan.
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Agatha Christie's gravestone in Cholsey.
From 1971 to 1974, Christie's health began to fail, although she continued to write. In 1975, sensing her
increasing weakness, Christie signed over the rights of her most successful play, The Mousetrap, to her
grandson.Recently, using experimental textual tools of analysis, Canadian researchers have suggested that
Christie may have begun to suffer from Alzheimer's disease or other dementia.
Agatha Christie died on 12 January 1976 at age 85 from natural causes at her Winterbrook House in the north of
Cholsey parish, adjoining Wallingford in Oxfordshire (formerly part of Berkshire). She is buried in the nearby
churchyard of St Mary's, Cholsey.
Christie's only child, Rosalind Margaret Hicks, died, also aged 85, on 28 October 2004 from natural causes in
Torbay, Devon. Christie's grandson, Mathew Prichard, was heir to the copyright to some of his grandmother's
literary work (including The Mousetrap) and is still associated with Agatha Christie Limited.
7. Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple
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Agatha Christie's first novel The Mysterious
Affair at Styles was published in 1920 and
introduced the long-running character
detective Hercule Poirot, who appeared in 33
of Christie's novels and 54 short stories.
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Her other well known character, Miss Marple,
was introduced in The Tuesday Night Club in
1927 (short story) and was based on women
like Christie's grandmother and her "cronies".
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During the Second World War, Christie wrote
two novels, Curtain and Sleeping Murder,
intended as the last cases of these two great
detectives, Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple,
respectively. Both books were sealed in a
bank vault for over thirty years and were
released for publication by Christie only at the
end of her life, when she realised that she
could not write any more novels. These
publications came on the heels of the success
of the film version of Murder on the Orient
Express in 1974.
Like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock
Holmes, Christie was to become increasingly
tired of her detective Poirot. In fact, by the end
of the 1930s,
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Christie confided to her diary that she was finding
Poirot “insufferable," and by the 1960s she felt
that he was "an ego-centric creep."However,
unlike Conan Doyle, Christie resisted the
temptation to kill her detective off while he was
still popular. She saw herself as an entertainer
whose job was to produce what the public liked,
and the public liked Poirot.
8. Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple
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In contrast, Christie was fond of Miss Marple. However, it is interesting to note that the Belgian
detective’s titles outnumber the Marple titles more than two to one. This is largely because
Christie wrote numerous Poirot novels early in her career, while The Murder at the Vicarage
remained the sole Marple novel until the 1940s.
Christie never wrote a novel or short story featuring both Poirot and Miss Marple. In a recording,
recently rediscovered and released in 2008, Christie revealed the reason for this: "Hercule Poirot,
a complete egoist, would not like being taught his business or having suggestions made to him
by an elderly spinster lady".
Poirot is the only fictional character to have been given an obituary in The New York Times,
following the publication of Curtain in 1975.
Following the great success of Curtain, Dame Agatha gave permission for the release of
Sleeping Murder sometime in 1976 but died in January 1976 before the book could be released.
This may explain some of the inconsistencies compared to the rest of the Marple series — for
example, Colonel Arthur Bantry, husband of Miss Marple's friend Dolly, is still alive and well in
Sleeping Murder despite the fact he is noted as having died in books published earlier. It may be
that Christie simply did not have time to revise the manuscript before she died. Miss Marple fared
better than Poirot, since after solving the mystery in Sleeping Murder she returns home to her
regular life in St. Mary Mead.
On an edition of Desert Island Discs in 2007, Brian Aldiss claimed that Agatha Christie told him
that she wrote her books up to the last chapter and then decided who the most unlikely suspect
was. She would then go back and make the necessary changes to "frame" that person.[32] The
evidence of Christie's working methods, as described by successive biographers, contradicts this
claim.
9. Critical reception
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Agatha Christie was revered as a master of suspense,
plotting, and characterisation by most of her
contemporaries[says who?. Fellow crime writer Anthony
Berkeley Cox was an admitted fan of her work, once
saying that nobody can write an Agatha Christie novel
but the authoress herself.
However, she does have her detractors, most notably the
American novelist Raymond Chandler, who criticised her
in his essay, "The Simple Art of Murder", and the
American literary critic Edmund Wilson, who was
dismissive of Christie and the detective fiction genre
generally in his New Yorker essay, "Who Cares Who
Killed Roger Ackroyd?".
Others have criticized Christie on political grounds,
particularly with respect to her conversations about and
portrayals of Jews. Christopher Hitchens, in his
autobiography, describes a dinner with Christie and her
husband, Max Mallowan, which became increasingly
uncomfortable as the night wore on, and where "The
anti-Jewish flavour of the talk was not to be ignored or
overlooked, or put down to heavy humour or generational
prejudice. It was vividly unpleasant..."Twenty-five years
after her death, critic Johann Hari notes "In its ugliest
moments, Christie’s conservatism crossed over into a
contempt for Jews, who are so often associated with
rationalist political philosophies and a ‘cosmopolitanism’
that is antithetical to the Burkean paradigm of the English
village. There is a streak of anti-Semitism running
through the pre-1950s novels which cannot be denied
even by her admirers.
10. Stereotyping
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Christie occasionally inserted stereotyped
descriptions of characters into her work,
particularly before the end of the Second
World War (when such attitudes were more
commonly expressed publicly), and
particularly in regard to Italians, Jews, and
non-Europeans. For example, in the first
editions of the collection The Mysterious Mr
Quin (1930), in the short story "The Soul of
the Croupier," she described "Hebraic men
with hook-noses wearing rather flamboyant
jewellery"; in later editions the passage was
edited to describe "sallow men" wearing
same. To contrast with the more
stereotyped descriptions, Christie often
characterised the "foreigners" in such a way
as to make the reader understand and
sympathise with them; this is particularly
true of her Jewish characters, who are
seldom actually criminals. (See, for
example, the character of Oliver Manders in
Three Act Tragedy.)
11. Novels written as Mary Westmacott
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1930 Giant's Bread
1934 Unfinished Portrait
1944 Absent in the Spring
1948 The Rose and the Yew
Tree
• 1952 A Daughter's a
Daughter
• 1956 The Burden
12. Plays
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1930 Black Coffee (Novelised by Charles Osborne in 1998 as Black
Coffee)
1943 And Then There Were None (Based on the 1939 novel Ten Little
Indians'''Bold text''')
1945 Appointment with Death (Based on the 1938 novel Appointment
with Death)
1946 Murder on the Nile/Hidden Horizon (Based on the 1937 novel
Death on the Nile)
1951 The Hollow (Based on the 1946 novel The Hollow)
1952 The Mousetrap (Based on the 1948 short story Three Blind Mice)
1953 Witness for the Prosecution (Based on the short story The Witness
for the Prosecution)
1954 Spider's Web (Novelised by Charles Osborne in 2000 as Spider's
Web)
1956 A Daughter's a Daughter (Written as a play in the late 1930s.
Performed professionally once. Unpublished but turned into the 1952
Mary Westmacott novel A Daughter's a Daughter)
1956 Towards Zero (Based on the 1944 novel Towards Zero)
1958 Verdict
1958 The Unexpected Guest (Novelised by Charles Osborne in 1999 as
The Unexpected Guest)
1960 Go Back for Murder (Based on the 1942 novel Five Little Pigs)
1962 Rule of Three (Comprising Afternoon at the Seaside, The Rats and
The Patient)
1972 Fiddler's Three (Originally written as Fiddler's Five. Unpublished.)
1973 Akhnaton (Written in 1937)
2003 Chimneys (Written in 1931, but unperformed for 72 years. Based
on the 1925 novel The Secret of Chimneys. Unpublished.)
14. Her greatest work: “Murder on the
Orient Express”
The Crime Scene
Returning from an important case in Palestine, Hercule Poirot boards the Orient Express in
Constantinople. The train is unusually crowded for the time of year. Poirot secures a berth only
with the help of his friend M. Bouc, a director of the Compagnie Internationale des WagonsLits. When a Mr. Harris fails to show up, Poirot takes his place. On the second night, Poirot
gets a compartment to himself.
That night, in Vinkovci, at about twenty-three minutes before 1:00 am, Poirot wakes to the
sound of a loud noise. It seems to come from the compartment next to his, which is occupied
by Mr. Ratchett. When Poirot peeks out his door, he sees the conductor knock on Mr.
Ratchett's door and ask if he is all right. A man replies in French "Ce n'est rien. Je me suis
trompé", which means "It's nothing. I was mistaken", and the conductor moves on to answer a
bell down the passage. Poirot decides to go back to bed, but he is disturbed by the fact that
the train is unusually still and his mouth is dry.
As he lies awake, he hears a Mrs. Hubbard ringing the bell urgently. When Poirot then rings
the conductor for a bottle of mineral water, he learns that Mrs. Hubbard claimed that someone
had been in her compartment. He also learns that the train has stopped due to a snowstorm.
Poirot dismisses the conductor and tries to go back to sleep, only to be wakened again by a
thump on his door. This time when Poirot gets up and looks out of his compartment, the
passage is completely silent, and he sees nothing except the back of a woman in a scarlet
kimono retreating down the passage in the distance.
The next day he awakens to find that Ratchett is dead, having been stabbed twelve times in
his sleep. M. Bouc suggests that Poirot take the case, being that it is so obviously his kind of
case; nothing more is required than for him to sit, think, and take in the available evidence.
15. Her greatest work: “Murder on
the Orient Express”
Original Film Cast
Hercule Poirot
....
Albert Finney
Mrs. Hubbard
....
Lauren Bacall
Signor Bianchi
....
Martin Balsam
Greta Ohlsson
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Ingrid Bergman
Countess Andrenyi
....
Jacqueline Bisset
Pierre Paul Michel
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Jean-Pierre Cassel
Colonel Arbuthnot
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Sean Connery
Mr. Beddoes
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John Gielgud
Princess Dragomiroff
....
Wendy Hiller
Hector MacQueen
....
Anthony Perkins
Mary Debenham
....
Vanessa Redgrave
Hildegarde
....
Rachel Roberts
Mr. Ratchett
....
Richard Widmark
Count Andrenyi
....
Michael York
Mr. Hardman
....
Colin Blakely
16. Her greatest work: “Murder on the
Orient Express”
• Detective: Hercule
Poirot
Hercule Poirot is a Belgian Inspector on the
Orient Express. He is respected by other
passengers, and is very intelligent. When
there is a murder, he is asked to help solve
the mystery. Detective Poirot is a clever
man who can gather important information
by small and unoticiable clues. This is
shown when he is questioning the Count
and Countess Andrenyi and Christie writes,
“[Poirot] was studying a grease spot on a
Hungarian diplomatic passport” (pg. 113).
This quotation demonstrates Poirot’s
attention to such small clues. As the
mystery progresses, the reader learns that
this grease spot becomes important to
solving the mystery.
17. Her greatest work: “Murder on
the Orient Express”
• Victim: M.Ratchett
M. Ratchett, known in America as Cassetti, is a
pseudophilanthropist who is very concieted
and molevelant. Before he boarded the
Orient Express, he had received several
threatening letters from various people.
However, at the beginning of the book he is
murdered. Poirot, the detective, soon
discovers that Mr. Ratchett was involved in
the kidnapping and murder a young child of
the last name of Armstrong in America. The
reader discovers this when Poirot says to M.
Bouc, “Do you remember reading of the
Armstrong baby? [M. Ratchett] is the man
who murdured little Daisy Armstrong.
Casetti” (pg. 64). This reveals M. Ratchett’s
real identity, Cassetti, the man who
murdered a baby.
18. Her greatest work: “Murder on
the Orient Express”
• Major Theme:
Mystery
In Murder on the Orient Express,
mystery is a major theme.
This is because there is a
murder, and Poirot must figure
out who the murderer, or
murderers might be. He must
learn who is innocent and who
is guilty. Throughout this
mysterious novel, unexpected
and interesting things happen.
