Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, DBE was an English crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote six romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for the 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections she wrote under her own name, most of which revolve around the investigations of such characters as Hercule Poirot, Miss Jane Marple and Tommy and Tuppence. She also wrote the world’s longest-running play, The Mousetrap.
Born to a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon, Christie served in a hospital during the First World War, before marrying and starting a family in London. Although initially unsuccessful at getting her work published, in 1920, The Bodley Head press published her novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring the character of Poirot. This launched her literary career. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time.
Her novels have sold roughly 4 billion copies, and her estate claims that her works rank third, after those of William Shakespeare and the Bible, as the world’s most-widely published books. According to Index Translationum, Christie is the most-translated individual author, nd her books have been translated into at least 103 languages. And Then There Were None is Christie’s best-selling novel with 100 million sales to date, making it the world’s best-selling mystery ever, and one of the best-selling books of all time. In 1971, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.
Christie’s stage play The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest initial run: it opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London on 25 November 1952 and as of 2012 is still running after more than 25,000 performances. In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s highest honour, the Grand Master Award, and in the same year Witness for the Prosecution was given an Edgar Award by the MWA for Best Play. Many of her books and short stories have been filmed, and many have been adapted for television, radio, video games and comics.
Life and career Childhood: 1890-1910 Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie was born on 15 September 1890 into a wealthy upper middle-class family in Ashfield, Torquay, Devon in South West England. Christie’s mother, Clara Boehmer was an Englishwoman who had been born in Belfast, modern-day Northern Ireland, in 1854 to Captain Frederick Boehmer and Mary Ann West; the couple’s only daughter, she had four brothers, one of whom died young. Captain Boehmer was killed in a riding accident while stationed on Jersey in April 1863, leaving Mary Ann to raise her children alone on a meagre income.
Under financial strain, she sent Clara to live with her aunt Margaret Miller n?©e West, who had married a wealthy American Nathaniel Frary Miller in 1863 and lived in Prinsted, West Sussex. Clara stayed with Margaret, and there she would meet her future husband, an American stockbroker named Frederick Alvah Miller, who was the son of Nathaniel. Frederick was a member of the small and wealthy American upper class, and had been sent to Europe to gain an education in Switzerland. Considered relationship with Clara, and they were married in April 1878.
Their first child, Margaret “Madge” Frary Miller was born in Torquay, where the couple were renting lodgings, while their second, Louis “Monty” Montant was born in the U. S. state of New York, where Frederick was on a business trip. Clara soon purchased a villa in Torquay, named “Ashfield”, in which to raise her family, and it was here that her third and final child, Agatha, was born. Christie would describe her childhood as “very happy”, and was surrounded by a series of strong and independent women from an early age.
Her time was spent alternating between her Devonshire home, her step grandmother/aunt’s house in Ealing, West London and parts of Southern Europe, where her family would holiday during the winter. Nominally Christian, she was also raised in a household with various esoteric beliefs, and like her siblings believed that their mother Clara was a psychic with the ability of second sight. Her mother insisted that she receive a home education, and so her parents were responsible for teaching er to read and write, and to be able to perform basic arithmetic, a subject that she particularly enjoyed.
They also taught her about music, and she learned to play both the piano and the mandolin. A voracious reader from an early age, among her earliest memories were those of reading the children’s books written by Mrs Molesworth, including The Adventures of Herr Baby, Christmas Tree Land and The Magic Nuts . She also read the work of Edith Nesbit, including The Story of the Treasure Seekers, The Phoenix and the Carpet and The Railway Children . When a little older she moved on to reading the surreal verse of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll.
Much of her childhood was spent largely alone and separate from other children, although she spent much time with her pets, whom she adored. Eventually making friends with a group of other girls in Torquay, she noted that “one of the highlights of my existence” was her appearance with them in a youth production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Yeomen of the Guard, in which she played the hero, Colonel Fairfax. This was to be her last operatic role, for as she later wrote, “an experience that you really enjoyed should never be repeated. Her father was often ill, suffering from a series of heart attacks, and in November 1901 he died, aged 55. His death left the family devastated, and in an uncertain economic situation. Clara and Agatha continued to live together in their Torquay home; Madge had moved to the nearby Cheadle Hall with her new husband and Monty had Joined the army and been sent to South Africa to fght in the Boer War. Agatha would later claim that her father’s death, occurring when she was 11 years old, marked the end of her childhood for her.
In 1902, Agatha would be sent to receive a formal education at Miss Guyer’s Girls School in Torquay, but found it difficult to adjust to the disciplined atmosphere. In 1905 she was then sent to the city of Paris, France, where she was educated in three pensions – Mademoiselle Cabernet’s, Les Marroniers and then Miss Dryden’s – the latter of which served primarily as a finishing school. Early literary attempts and the First World War: 1910-1919 Returning to England in 1910, Agatha found her mother Clara ill.
They holidayed in the warmer climate of Cairo in Egypt, then a popular tourist destination for wealthy Britons. Staying for three months at the Gezirah Palace Hotel, Agatha – always chaperoned by her mother – attended many social functions in search of a husband. Although visiting such reat interest in archaeology and Egyptology prominent in her later years. Returning to Britain, she continued her social activities in search of a husband. Writing and performing in amateur theatrics, she helped put on a play called The Blue Beard of Unhappiness with female friends.
Her writing extended to both poetry and music. Some early works saw publication, but she decided against focusing on either of these as future professions. While recovering in bed from illness, she penned her first short story “The House of Beauty”, about 6000 words on the world of “madness and dreams”, a subject of fascination. Later biographer Janet Morgan commented that despite “infelicities of style”, the story was nevertheless “compelling”. Other shorts followed, most illustrated her interest in spiritualism and the paranormal, including “The Call of Wings” and “The Little Lonely God”.
Under pseudonyms, various magazines rejected all her early submissions, although revised and published later, some under new titles. Christie then set her first novel, Snow Upon the Desert, in Cairo, and drew from her recent experiences in the city. Under the pseudonym Monosyllaba, she was perturbed when various publishers all declined. Clara suggested that her daughter ask for advice from a family friend and neighbor, the successful writer Eden Philpotts. Philpotts obliged her enquiry, encouraged her writing, and sent her an introduction to his literary agent, Hughes Massie.
However, he too rejected Snow Upon the Desert, and suggested a second novel. Meanwhile, Christie continued searching for a husband, and had entered into short-lived relationships with four separate men, one engagement, before meeting Archibald “Archie” Christie at a dance given by Lord and Lady Clifford of Chudleigh, about from Torquay. Archie had been born in India, the son of a Judge in the Indian Civil Service. In England he Joined the air service, stationed at Devon in 1912. The couple quickly fell in love. Upon learning he would be stationed in Farnborough, Archie proposed marriage, and she accepted. 914 saw the outbreak of World War I, and Archie was sent to France to battle the German forces. Agatha also involved herself in the war effort, Joining the Voluntary Aid Detachment and attending to wounded soldiers at the hospital in Torquay. In this position, she was responsible for aiding the doctors nd maintaining morale, performing 3,400 hours of unpaid work between October 1914 and December 1916. As a dispenser, she finally earned E16 yearly until the end of her service in September 1918. She met her fianc?© Archie, in London during his leave at the end of 1914, and they married on the afternoon of Christmas Eve.
They met throughout the war every time that he was posted home. Rising through the ranks, he was eventually stationed back to Britain in September 1918 as a colonel in the Air Ministry. They settled into a flat at 5 Northwick Terrace in St. John’s Wood, Northwest London. First novels: 1919-1923 Christie had long been a fan of detective novels, having enjoyed Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White and The Moonstone as well as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s early Sherlock Holmes stories. She wrote her own detective novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring Hercule Poirot.
A former Belgian police officer noted for his twirly large “magnificent moustaches” and egg-shaped head, he was a refugee to Britain after Germany invaded Belgium, inspired by real Belgian refugees in Torquay. The Styles manuscript was not accepted by such publishing companies as Hodder and months, then accepted if she would change the ending. She duly did so, and signed a contract she later felt was exploitative. Christie meanwhile settled into married life, giving birth to daughter Rosalind at Ashfield in August 1919, where the couple – having few friends in London – spent much of their time.
Having left the Air Force at the end of the war, Archie started in the City financial sector at a relatively low salary, though they still employed a maid. Christie’s second novel, The Secret Adversary, featured new detective couple Tommy and Tuppence. Again published by The Bodley Head, it earned her E50. A third novel again featured Poirot, Murder on the Links, as id short stories commissioned by Bruce Ingram, editor of Sketch magazine. In order to tour the world promoting the British Empire Exhibition, the couple left their daughter Rosalind with Agatha’s mother and sister.
The pair traveled to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii. They learned to surf prone in South Africa, then in Waikiki were among the first Britons to surf standing up. Disappearance In late 1926, Christie’s husband Archie asked for a divorce; he was in love with Nancy Neele. On 3 December 1926, the couple quarrelled, and Archie left their house Styles n Sunningdale, Berkshire, to spend the weekend with his mistress at Godalming, Surrey. That same evening, around 9. 45 pm, Christie disappeared from her home, leaving behind a letter for her secretary saying that she was going to Yorkshire.
Her car, a Morris Cowley, was later found at Newlands Corner, near Guildford, with an expired driving licence and clothes. Her disappearance caused an outcry from the public. The Home Secretary, William Joynson-Hicks, pressured police; a newspaper offered EIOO reward. Over a thousand police officers, 1 5,000 volunteers and several aeroplanes scoured the rural landscape. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle even gave a spirit medium one of Christie’s gloves to find the missing woman. Dorothy L Sayers visited the house in Surrey, later using the scenario in her book Unnatural Death.
Christie’s disappearance featured on the front page of The New York Times. Despite the extensive manhunt, she was not found for 10 days. On 14 December 1926, Agatha Christie was found at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire, registered as ‘Mrs Teresa Neele’ from Cape Town. Christie never explained her disappearance. Author Jared Cade interviewed numerous witnesses and relatives for his sympathetic iography, Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days, revised 2011. He provided substantial evidence to suggest she planned the event to embarrass her husband, never supposing the resulting escalated melodrama.
The 1979 Michael Apted film Agatha starring Vanessa Redgrave, Dustin Hoffman and Timothy Dalton depicts Christie planning suicide, to frame her husband’s mistress for her “murder”. An American reporter, played by Hoffman, follows her closely and stops the plan. The Christies divorced in 1928, and Archie married his mistress, the secretary of their world tour. Agatha retained custody of daughter Rosalind, and the Christie name for her writing. During their marriage, she published six novels, a collection of short stories, and a number of short stories in magazines.
Second marriage and later life In 1930, Christie married archaeologist Max Mallowan after Joining him in an archaeological dig. Their marriage was always happy, continuing until Christie’s death in 1976. Christie frequently used settings which were familiar to her for her stories. Christie’s travels with Mallowan contributed background to several of her she was born. Christie’s 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express was written in the Pera Palace Hotel 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. Christie often stayed at Abney Hall in Cheshire, owned by her brother-in-law, James Watts, basing at least two stories there: short story “The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding”, 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. ” 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, and in The Pale Horse, published in 1961, she employed it o 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. Christie lived in Chelsea, first in Cresswell Place and later in Sheffield Terrace. Both properties are now marked by blue plaques. Around 1941-1942, the British intelligence agency M15 investigated Agatha Christie. A character called Major Bletchley appeared in her 1941 thriller N or M? , a story that features a hunt for two of Hitler’s top secret spy agents in Britain. M15 was afraid that Christie had a spy in Britain’s top-secret codebreaking centre, Bletchley Park.
The agency’s fears were allayed when Christie commented to codebreaker Dilly Knox that Bletchley was simply the name of “one of my least lovable characters. ” 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 archaeological 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 Mallowan.
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, djoining Wallingford in Oxfordshire . 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 and is still associated with Agatha Christie Limited. Work Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple Agatha Christie’s first novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles was published in 1920 and of Christie’s novels and 54 short stories. Well-known Miss Marple was introduced in The Thirteen Problems in 1927 and was based on Christie’s grandmother and her “Ealing cronies”.
Both Jane and Gran “always expected the worst of everyone and everything, and was, with almost frightening accuracy, usually proved right. ” Miss Marple appeared in 12 of Christie’s novels. 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. Both books were sealed in a bank vault for over thirty years and were released for publication by Christie only at he 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, 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 Doyle, Christie resisted the temptation to kill her detective off while he was still popular.
She aw herself as an entertainer whose Job was to produce what the public liked, and the public liked Poirot. Feeling tied down, stuck with a love interest, she did marry off Hastings in an attempt to trim her cast commitments. In contrast, Christie was fond of Miss Marple. However, 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 discovered 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”. Following the great success of Curtain, Christie 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. Formula and plot devices Agatha Christie’s reputation as “The Queen of Crime” was built by the large number of classic motifs that she introduced, or for which she provided the most famous example.
Christie built these tropes into what is now considered classic mystery tructure: a murder is committed, there are multiple suspects who are all concealing secrets, and the detective gradually uncovers these secrets over the course of the story, discovering the most shocking twists towards the end. At the end, in a Christie hallmark, the detective usually gathers the surviving suspects into one room, explains the course of his or her deductive reasoning, and announces the guilty party, although there are exceptions in which it is left to the guilty party to explain all .
Seven stories are inspired by a nursery rhyme: And Then There Were None by Ten y This Little Piggy; Crooked House by There Was a Crooked Man; A Pocket Full of Rye by Sing a Song of Sixpence; Hickory Dickory Dock by Hickory Dickory Dock, and Three Blind Mice by Three Blind Mice. Twice, the murderer turns out to be the unreliable narrator of the story. In six stories, Christie allows the murderer to escape Justice: these are The Witness for the Prosecution, Five Little Pigs, The Man in the Brown Suit, Murder on the Orient Express, Curtain and The Unexpected Guest.
There are also numerous instances where the killer is not brought to Justice in the legal sense but nstead dies, for example Death Comes as the End, And Then There Were None, Death on the Nile, Dumb Witness, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Crooked House, Appointment with Death, The Hollow, Nemesis, Cat Among the Pigeons, and The Secret Adversary. In some cases, this is with the collusion of the detective involved. In some stories, the question of whether formal Justice will be done is left unresolved, such as Five Little Pigs and Ordeal by Innocence. Christie often made the unlikeliest character guilty.
This happened so often that it became a clich?©; savvy readers could dentify the murderer by simply identifying the least likely suspect. 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, then decided who the most unlikely suspect was, after which she would then go back and make the necessary changes to “frame” that person. John Curran’s Agatha Christie: The Secret Notebooks describes different working methods for every book in her autobiography, thus contradicting this claim.
The first Hercule Poirot began with tram passengers and Belgian refugees. Man in the Brown Suit started with Belcher from the world tour. Murder on the Links began with news from France, a wife debunked, who claimed intruders tied her up and murdered her husband. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd killer was suggested by brother-in-law James Watt. The Big Four, helped by Archie’s brother Cambell, was a stop-gap collection of Sketch magazine stories, for money when her husband left.
Critical reception The world’s best-selling mystery writer, and often referred to as the “Queen of Crime”, Agatha Christie is considered a master of suspense, plotting, and characterisation. Some critics however regarded Christie’s plotting abilities as considerably exceeding her literary ones. The novelist Raymond Chandler criticised her in his essay, “The Simple Art of Murder”, and the American literary critic Edmund Wilson was dismissive of Christie and the detective fiction genre generally in his New Yorker essay, “Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? . Stereotyping Christie occasionally inserted stereotyped descriptions of characters into her work, particularly before the end of the Second World War, and particularly in regard to Italians, Jews, and non-Europeans. For example, in the first editions of the collection The Mysterious Mr Quin, 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.
In “The Hollow”, published as late as 1946, one of the more unsympathetic characters is “a Whitechapel Jewess with dyed hair and a voice like a corncrake a small woman with a thick nose, henna red and a disagreeable voice”. To contrast with the more stereotyped descriptions, Christie sometimes characterised the “foreigners” in such a rue of her Jewish characters, who while seen as unEnglish are seldom actually criminals. Often she is lovingly affectionate or teasing with her prejudices.
After four years of war-torn London, Christie hoped to return some day to Syria, which she described as “gentle fertile country and its simple people, who know how to laugh and how to enjoy life; who are idle and gay, and who have dignity, good manners, and a great sense of humour, and to whom death is not terrible. ” After trouble with an incompetent Swiss French nursery helper Marcelle for toddler Rosalind, she decides “Scottish preferred good with the young.
The French were hopeless disciplinarians Germans good and methodical, but it was not German that I really wanted Rosalind to learn. The Irish were gay but made trouble in the house; the English were of all kinds” She proposes this, after the fact, knowing the chosen Charlotte lasts decades. Her book titles, changed by American publishers, for example Ten Little Niggers to Ten Little Indians, were kept the same across the Atlantic, after bushels of fan mail.
Archaeology Christie had always had an interest in archaeology. On a trip to the excavation site at Ur in 1930, she met her future husband, Sir Max Mallowan, a distinguished archaeologist, but her fame as an author far surpassed his fame in archaeology. Prior to meeting Mallowan, Christie had not had any extensive brushes with archaeology, but once the two married they made sure to only go to sites where they could work together.
While accompanying Mallowan on countless archaeological trips, Christie not only wrote novels and short stories, but also contributed work to the archaeological sites, more specifically to the archaeological restoration and labeling of ancient exhibits which includes tasks such as cleaning nd conserving delicate ivory pieces, reconstructing pottery, developing photos from early excavations which later led to taking photographs of the site and its findings, and taking field notes.
So as to not influence the funding of the archaeological excavations, Christie would always pay for her own board and lodging and her travel expenses, and supported excavations as an anonymous sponsor. After the Second World War, she chronicled her time in Syria with fondness in “Come Tell Me How You Live”. Anecdotes, memories, funny episodes, are strung in a rough timeline, with ore emphasis on eccentric characters, lovely scenery, than factual accuracy.
From 8 November 2001 to 24 March 2002, The British Museum had an exhibit named Agatha Christie and Archaeology: Mystery in Mesopotamia, which presented the secret life of Agatha Christie and the influences of archaeology in her life and works. Archaeological influences in her writing Many of the settings for Agatha Christie’s books were directly inspired by the many archaeological field seasons spent in the Middle East on the sites managed by her second husband Max Mallowan. Her time spent at the many locations featured in her ooks is very apparent by the extreme detail in which she describes them.
One such site featured in her books is the temple site of Abu Simbel in Death on the Nile, as well as the great detail in which she describes life at the dig site in Murder in Mesopotamia. Characters Of the characters in her books, Christie has often showcased the archaeologist and experts in Middle Eastern cultures and artifacts. Most notably are the characters of many minor characters in They Came to Baghdad were archaeologists. More indirectly, Christie’s famous character of Hercule Poirot can be compared to an rchaeologist in his detailed scrutiny of all facts both large and small.
Cornelius Holtorf, an academic archaeologist, describes an archaeologist as a detective as one of the key themes of archaeology in popular culture. He describes an archaeologist as a professional detective of the past who has the ability to reveal secrets for the greater of society. Holtorf’s description of the archaeologist as a detective is very similar to Christie’s Poirot who is hugely observant and is very careful to look at the small details as they often impart the most information. Many of Christie’s detective haracters show some archaeological traits through their careful attention to clues and artifacts alike.
Miss Marple, another of Christie’s most-famous characters, shares these characteristics of careful deduction though the attention paid to the small clues. Spirituality Christie’s life within the archaeological world not only shaped her settings and characters for her books but also in the issues she highlights. One of the stronger influences is her love of the mystical and mysterious. Many of Christie’s books and short stories both set in the Middle East and back in England have a decidedly therworldly influence in which religious sects, sacrifices, ceremony, and seances play a part.
Such stories include “The Hound of Death” and “the Idol House of Astarte”. This theme was greatly strengthened by Christie’s time spent in the Middle East where she was consistently surrounded by the religious temples and spiritual history of the towns and cities they were excavating in Mallowan’s archaeological work. Travel as adventure During Christie and Mallowan’s time in the Middle East, along with their time spent among the many tombs, temples, and museums, there was also a large amount of time spent traveling to and from Mallowan’s sites.
The travelling involved in the archaeology had a large influence on Christie’s writing, which is often reflected as some type of transportation playing a part in her murderer’s schemes. The large amount of travel done by Christie and Mallowan has not only made for a great writing theme, as shown in her famous novel The Murder on the Orient Express, but also tied into the idea of archaeology as an adventure that has become so important in today’s popular culture as described by Cornelius Holtorf in his book Archaeology is a Brand. Popular novels with heavy archaeological influences Murder in Mesopotamia
Appointment with Death Death on the Nile They Came to Baghdad Portrayals of Christie Christie has been portrayed on a number of occasions in film and television. Several biographical programs have been made, such as the 2004 BBC television programme Williams, Anna Massey, and Bonnie Wright. Christie has also been portrayed fictionally. Some of these have explored and offered accounts of Christie’s disappearance in 1926, including the 1979 film Agatha and the Doctor Who episode “The Unicorn and the Wasp” . Others, such as 1980 Hungarian film, Kojak Budapesten create their own scenarios involving Christie’s criminal skill.
In the 1986 TV play, Murder by the Book, Christie herself murdered one of her fictional-turned-real characters, Poirot. The heroine of Liar-soft’s 2008 visual novel Shikkoku no Sharnoth: What a Beautiful Tomorrow, Mary Clarissa Christie, is based on the real-life Christie. Christie features as a character in Gaylord Larsen’s Dorothy and Agatha and The London Blitz Murders by Max Allan Collins. Christie’s works Adaptations Film Television 1937 spiders web 1938 Love from a Stranger 1947 Love from a Stranger 1949 Ten Little Indians 1959 Ten Little Indians 1970 The Murder at the Vicarage 1980 Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? 82 spiders web 1982 The Seven Dials Mystery 1982 The Agatha Christie Hour 1982 Murder Is Easy 1982 The Witness for the Prosecution 1983 The Secret Adversary 1983 Partners in Crime 1983 A Caribbean Mystery 1983 Sparkling Cyanide 1984 The Body in the Library 1985 Murder with Mirrors 1985 The Moving Finger 1985 A Murder is Announced 1985 A pocket Full of Rye 1985 Thirteen at Dinner 1986 Dead Marl’s Folly 1986 Murder in Three Acts 1986 The Murder at the Vicarage 1987 Sleeping Murder 1987 At Bertram’s Hotel 1987 Nemesis 1987 4. 50 from Paddington 1989 The Man in the Brown Suit 1989 A Caribbean Mystery
