AGATHA CHRISTIE Biography - Theater, Opera and Movie personalities

 
 

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AGATHA CHRISTIE
       

Agatha Marry Clarissa popularly known Agatha Christie (15 Sept., 1890 12 Jan., 1976) was a best-seller author. Her first marriage, an unhappy one, was in 1914 to Colonel Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal FIying Corps. The couple had one daughter, Rosalind, and divorced in 1928.

       

During World War I she worked as a pharmacist, a job that also influenced her work: many of the murders in her books are carried out with poison.

       

In December 1926 she disappeared for eleven days, causing quite a storm in the press. Her car was found abandoned in a chalk pit. She was eventually found staying at a hotel in Harrogate, where she claimed to heve suffered amnesia due to a nervous breakdown following the death of her mother and troubles in her first marriage. Opinions are still divided as to whether this was a publicity stunt or not.

       

In 1930, she married Sir Max Mallowan, a British archaeologist, and her travels with him contributed background to several of her novels set in the Middle East. Other novels were set in Torquay, Devon, where she was born. Famous characters include Hercule Poirot and Miss (Jane) Marple. Her stage play The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest run ever in London, opening at the Ambassadors Theatre on Nogvember 25, 1952 and as of 2004 still running after more than 20,000 performances.

       

Sir Richard Attenborough, who was in the original production, participated in an anniversary performance: “It lasted so long because it is a bloody good play. Agatha Christie is very, very clever indeed.”

       

In 1971 she was created a Dame Commander of the British Empire.

       

Two of her novels were written at the height of her career, but held back until after her death: they were the last cases of Poirot and Miss Marple. In the final Poirot novel Curtain, Christie killed her creation and explained in her diary that she had always found him insufferable. She had a great fondness for Miss Marple to solve one more mystery in Sleeping Murder and return to the solitude of her v illage.

       

Agatha Christie’s only child, Rosalind Hicks, died on October 28, 2004, aged 85.