Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie
For the band, see Agatha Christie (band).
Dame Agatha Christie, DBE
Born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller
15 September 1890(1890-09-15)
Torquay, Devon, England
Died 12 January 1976(1976-01-12) (aged 85)
Wallingford, Oxfordshire, England
Pen name Mary Westmacott
Occupation Novelist/Short story writer/Playwright/Poet
Nationality British
Genres Murder mystery, Thriller, Crime fiction, Detective, Romances
Literary movement Golden Age of Detective Fiction
Spouse(s) Archibald Christie (1914–1928)
Max Mallowan (1930–1976; her death)
Children Rosalind Hicks (1919–2004) Father: Archibald Christie
Signature
agathachristie.com

Dame Agatha Christie DBE (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections (especially those featuring Hercule Poirot or Miss Jane Marple), and her successful West End plays.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time and, with William Shakespeare, the best-selling author of any type. She has sold roughly four billion copies of her novels.[1] According to Index Translationum, Christie is the most translated individual author, with only the collective corporate works of Walt Disney Productions surpassing her.[2] Her books have been translated into at least 103 languages.[3]

Agatha Christie published two autobiographies: a posthumous one covering childhood to old age; and another chronicling several seasons of archaeological excavation in Syria and Iraq with her second husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan. The latter was published in 1946 with the title, Come, Tell Me How You Live.

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 2011 is still running after more than 24,000 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, some more than once (Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile and 4.50 From Paddington for instance), and many have been adapted for television, radio, video games and comics.

In 1968, Booker Books, a subsidiary of the agri-industrial conglomerate Booker-McConnell, bought a 51 percent stake in Agatha Christie Limited, the private company that Christie had set up for tax purposes. Booker later increased its stake to 64 percent. In 1998, Booker sold its shares to Chorion, a company whose portfolio also includes the literary estates of Enid Blyton and Dennis Wheatley.[4]

In 2004, a 5,000-word story entitled The Incident of the Dog's Ball was found in the attic of the author's daughter. This story was the original version of the novel Dumb Witness. It was published in Britain in September 2009 in John Curran's Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years Of Mysteries, alongside another newly discovered Poirot story called The Capture of Cerberus (a story with the same title, but a different plot, to that published in The Labours Of Hercules).[5] On 10 November 2009, Reuters announced that The Incident of the Dog's Ball will be published by The Strand Magazine.[6]

Contents

Life and career

Early life and first marriage

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay, Devon, England, UK. Her mother, Clarissa Margaret Boehmer, was the daughter of a British Army captain[7] 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.[8]

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".[9]

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.[10]

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".[11] 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.

Despite a turbulent courtship, on Christmas Eve 1914 Agatha married Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps.[12] The couple had one daughter, Rosalind Hicks. Agatha's first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920. When Archie was offered a job organizing a world tour to promote the British Empire Exhibition the couple left their daughter with Agatha's mother and sister and travelled to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii.[13] The couple learnt to surf prone in South Africa and in Waikiki became some of the first Britons to surf standing up.[14]

Disappearance

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 quarrelled, 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.[15]

On 19 December 1926 Agatha was identified as a guest at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel (now the Old Swan Hotel[16]) 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.[17]

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.[18]

The Christies divorced in 1928. During their marriage, Agatha published six novels, a collection of short stories, and a number of short stories in magazines.

Second marriage and later life

Agatha Christie's room at the Pera Palace Hotel, where she wrote Murder on the Orient Express.
Agatha Christie blue plaque. No. 58 Sheffield Terrace, Kensington & Chelsea, London

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.[19] Max introduced her to various wines (“But you never drink ... Heaven knows, I’ve tried hard enough with you”), but acknowledged defeat, and had the battle of obtaining water for her in restaurants. She also tried unsuccessfully to make herself like cigarettes by smoking one after lunch and one after dinner every day for six months.[20]

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 Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul, Turkey, the southern terminus of the railway. The hotel maintains Christie's room as a memorial to the author.[21] 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, 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."[22]

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.[23]

To honour her many literary works, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1956 New Year Honours.[24] The next year, she became the President of the Detection Club.[25] In the 1971 New Year Honours she was promoted Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire,[26] three years after her husband had been knighted for his archeological work in 1968.[27] 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.

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.[19] 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.[28][29][30][31]

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.[32] 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.

Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple

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.

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".[33]

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 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, 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 saw herself as an entertainer whose job was to produce what the public liked, and the public liked Poirot.[34]

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".[33]

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.[35] The evidence of Christie's working methods, as described by successive biographers, contradicts this claim.[citation needed]

Formula and plot devices

Almost all of Agatha Christie's books are whodunits, focusing on the British middle and upper classes. Usually, the detective either stumbles across the murder or is called upon by an old acquaintance, who is somehow involved. Gradually, the detective interrogates each suspect, examines the scene of the crime and makes a note of each clue, so readers can analyze it and be allowed a fair chance of solving the mystery themselves. Then, about halfway through, or sometimes even during the final act, one of the suspects usually dies, often because they have inadvertently deduced the killer's identity and need silencing. In a few of her novels, including Death Comes as the End and And Then There Were None, there are multiple victims. Finally, the detective organises a meeting of all the suspects and slowly denounces the guilty party, exposing several unrelated secrets along the way, sometimes over the course of thirty or so pages. The murders are often extremely ingenious, involving some convoluted piece of deception. Christie's stories are also known for their taut atmosphere and strong psychological suspense, developed from the deliberately slow pace of her prose.

Twice, the murderer surprisingly turns out to be the unreliable narrator of the story.

In five stories, Christie allows the murderer to escape justice (and in the case of the last three, implicitly almost approves of their crimes); these are The Witness for the Prosecution, The Man in the Brown Suit, Murder on the Orient Express, Curtain and The Unexpected Guest. (When Christie adapted Witness into a stage play, she lengthened the ending so that the murderer was also killed.) There are also numerous instances where the killer is not brought to justice in the legal sense but instead dies (death usually being presented as a more 'sympathetic' outcome), 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, and The Secret Adversary. In some cases this is with the collusion of the detective involved. Five Little Pigs, and arguably Ordeal by Innocence, end with the question of whether formal justice will be done unresolved.

Critical reception

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.[citation needed]

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?".[36]

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..."[37]

Stereotyping

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.)[38]

Portrayals

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 entitled Agatha Christie: A Life in Pictures, in which she is portrayed by Olivia 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 (with Vanessa Redgrave, where she sneaks away to plan revenge against her husband) and the Doctor Who episode "The Unicorn and the Wasp" (with Fenella Woolgar, her disappearance being the result of her suffering a temporary breakdown due to a brief psychic link being formed between her and an alien). Others, such as 1980 Hungarian film, Kojak Budapesten (not to be confused with the 1986 comedy by the same name) create their own scenarios involving Christie's criminal skill.[39] In the 1986 TV play, Murder by the Book, Christie herself (Dame Peggy Ashcroft) 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.[citation needed]

Christie has also been parodied on screen, such as in the film Murder by Indecision, which featured the character "Agatha Crispy".

Bibliography

See Agatha Christie bibliography

Other works based on Christie's books and plays

Plays adapted into novels

Charles Osborne novelised three of Christie's plays:

These three novels are now available in the collection Murder In Three Stages.

Plays adapted by other authors

Movie adaptations

Year Title Story based on Notes
1928 "The Passing of Mr. Quinn" The Coming of Mr. Quin First Christie film adaptation.
1929 "Die Abenteurer G.m.b.H." The Secret Adversary First Christie foreign film adaptation. German adaptation of The Secret Adversary
1931 "Alibi" The stage play Alibi and the novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd First Christie film adaptation to feature Hercule Poirot.
1931 "Black Coffee" Black Coffee
1932 "Le Coffret de Laque" Black Coffee French adaptation of Black Coffee.
1934 "Lord Edgware Dies" Lord Edgware Dies
1937 "Love from a Stranger" The stage play Love from a Stranger and the short story Philomel Cottage Released in the US as A Night of Terror.
1945 "And Then There Were None" The stage play And Then There Were None and the novel And Then There Were None First Christie film adaptation of And Then There Were None.
1947 "Love from a Stranger" The stage play Love from a Stranger and the short story Philomel Cottage Released in the UK as A Stranger Walked In.
1957 "Witness for the Prosecution" The stage play Witness for the Prosecution and the short story The Witness for the Prosecution
1960 "The Spider's Web" Spider's Web
1961 "Murder, She Said" 4.50 From Paddington First Christie film adaptation to feature Miss Marple.
1963 "Murder at the Gallop" After the Funeral In the film Miss Marple replaces Hercule Poirot
1964 "Murder Most Foul" Mrs. McGinty's Dead The film is loosely based on the book and as a major change Miss Marple replaces Hercule Poirot
1964 "Murder Ahoy!" None An original movie not based on any book, although it borrows some elements of They Do It With Mirrors.
1965 "Gumnaam" And Then There Were None Uncredited adaptation of And Then There Were None.
1965 "Ten Little Indians" The stage play And Then There Were None and the novel And Then There Were None
1965 "The Alphabet Murders" The A.B.C. Murders
1972 "Endless Night" Endless Night
1973 "Dhund (1973 film)" The Unexpected Guest (play) Dhund (translation: Fog) is a 1973 Hindi movie produced and directed by B. R. Chopra.
1974 "Murder on the Orient Express" Murder on the Orient Express
1974 "And Then There Were None" The stage play And Then There Were None and the novel And Then There Were None Released in the US as Ten Little Indians.
1978 "Death on the Nile" The stage play Murder on the Nile and the novel Death on the Nile
1980 "The Mirror Crack'd" The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side
1982 "Evil Under the Sun" Evil Under the Sun
1985 "Ordeal by Innocence" Ordeal by Innocence
1987 "Desyat Negrityat" The stage play And Then There Were None and the novel And Then There Were None Russian film adaptation of And Then There Were None.
1988 "Appointment With Death" The stage play Appointment with Death and the novel Appointment with Death
1989 "Ten Little Indians" The stage play And Then There Were None and the novel And Then There Were None
1995 "Innocent Lies" Towards Zero
2005 "Mon petit doigt m'a dit..." By the Pricking of My Thumbs French adaptation of By the Pricking of My Thumbs.
2007 "L'Heure zéro" Towards Zero French adaptation of Towards Zero.
2008 "Le crime est notre affaire" 4.50 From Paddington French adaptation of 4.50 From Paddington
v · Miss Marple Murder films
Films

Television adaptations

Agatha Christie's Poirot television series

Episodes of the television series Agatha Christie's Poirot include:

Graphic novels

Euro Comics India began issuing a series of graphic novel adaptations of Christie's work in 2007.

HarperCollins independently began issuing this series also in 2007.

In addition to the titles issued the following titles are also planned for release:

Video games

  • 1988 The Scoop (published by Spinnaker Software and Telarium) (PC)
  • 2005 Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None (PC and Wii).
  • 2006 Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express (PC)
  • 2007 Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile (I-Spy" hidden-object game) (PC)
  • 2007 Agatha Christie: Evil Under the Sun (PC and Wii)
  • 2008 Agatha Christie: Peril at End House (I-Spy" hidden-object game)
  • 2009 Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders (DS)
  • 2009 Agatha Christie: Dead Man's Folly (I-Spy" hidden-object game)(PC)
  • 2010 Agatha Christie 4:50 from Paddington (I-Spy" hidden-object game)(PC)

Unpublished material

  • Personal Call (supernatural radio play, featuring Inspector Narracott who also appeared in The Sittaford Mystery; a recording is in the British Library Sound Archive)
  • The Woman and the Kenite (horror: an Italian translation, allegedly transcribed from an Italian magazine of the 1920s, is available on the internet: La moglie del Kenita[dead link]).
  • Butter In a Lordly Dish (horror/detective radio play, adapted from The Woman and the Kenite)
  • Being So Very Wilful (romantic)
  • Snow Upon the Desert (romantic novel)[40]
  • Stronger than Death (supernatural)[41]
  • The Green Gate (supernatural)[41]
  • The Greenshore Folly (novella featuring Hercule Poirot; the basis for Dead Man's Folly)[42]
  • The War Bride (supernatural)
  • Eugenia and Eugenics (stage play)[41]
  • Witchhazel (supernatural short story)[41]
  • Someone at the Window (play adapted from short story The Dead Harlequin)[41]

Animation

In 2004 the Japanese broadcasting company Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai turned Poirot and Marple into animated characters in the anime series Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple, introducing Mabel West (daughter of Miss Marple's mystery-writer nephew Raymond West, a canonical Christie character) and her duck Oliver as new characters.

See also

Book collection.jpg Novels portal
  • Tropes in Agatha Christie's novels
  • Agatha Christie: A Life in Pictures (Her life story in a 2004 BBC drama)
  • Abney Hall (home to her brother-in-law; several books use Abney as their setting)
  • Greenway Estate (Christie's former home in Devon. The grounds are now in the possession of the National Trust and open to the public)
  • Agatha Christie indult (a non-denominational request to which Christie was signatory seeking permission for the occasional use of the Tridentine (Latin) mass in England and Wales)

Notes

  1. ^ Flemming, Michael (15 February 2000). "Agatha Christie gets a clue for filmmakers". Variety. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117776459.html?categoryid=3&cs=1. Retrieved 25 April 2010. 
  2. ^ "Statistics on whole Index Translationum database". UNESCO. http://databases.unesco.org/xtrans/stat/xTransStat.a?VL1=A&top=50&lg=0. Retrieved 14 May 2008. 
  3. ^ Guinness Book of World Records (Sterling Pub. Co., 1976), 210.
  4. ^ "Chorion". Chorion. http://www.chorion.co.uk/. Retrieved 9 March 2010. 
  5. ^ Kennedy, Maev; Allen, Katie (5 June 2009). "Two unpublished Poirot short stories found". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/05/two-unpublished-poirot-stories-found. Retrieved 12 September 2010. 
  6. ^ Burton Frierson (10 November 2009). "Lost Agatha Christie story to be published". Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE5A95OG20091110. Retrieved 11 November 2009. 
  7. ^ Morgan, Janet. Agatha Christie, A Biography. (Page 2) Collins, 1984 ISBN 0-00-216330-6
  8. ^ Wagoner, Mary S. Agatha Christie. (Page 26) Twayne Publishers, 1986 ISBN 0-8057-6936-6, 978-0-8057-6936-4
  9. ^ Brief Biography of Agatha Christie Christie Bio
  10. ^ Christie, Autobiography, first two sections.
  11. ^ Christie, p. 230
  12. ^ Christie, pp. 215, 237
  13. ^ "Agatha Christie's surfing secret revealed". The Guardian. London. 2011-07-29. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jul/29/agatha-christie-hercule-poirot-surfing-secret. Retrieved 2011-07-30. 
  14. ^ "Agatha Christie 'one of Britain's first stand-up surfers'". The Daily Telegraph. London. 29 July 2011. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8670354/Agatha-Christie-one-of-Britains-first-stand-up-surfers.html. Retrieved 30 July 2011. 
  15. ^ "MRS. CHRISTIE FOUND IN A YORKSHIRE SPA; Missing Novelist, Under an Assumed Name, Was Staying at a Hotel There. CLUE A NEWSPAPER PICTURE Mystery Writer Is Victim of Loss of Memory, Her Husband Declares. MRS. CHRISTIE FOUND IN A YORKSHIRE SPA". New York Times. 15 December 1926. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60C17FE3C591B7A93C7A81789D95F428285F9&scp=4&sq=Agatha%20Christie%20Disappearance&st=cse. Retrieved 16 September 2009. 
  16. ^ The Harrogate Hydropathic hotel, nowadays the Old Swan Hotel, was also known as the Swan Hydro, because of its location on Swan Road, on the site of an earlier Old Swan Hotel. A Brief History of Harrogate
  17. ^ Adams, Cecil, Why did mystery writer Agatha Christie mysteriously disappear? The Chicago Reader, 4/2/82. [1] Accessed 19 May 2008. In her autobiography, Agatha strongly suggests that she had a nervous breakdown. When hearing another woman recount similar symptoms, she said she replied, "I think you had better be very careful; it is probably the beginning of a nervous breakdown." Christie, Autobiography, 360.
  18. ^ Agatha Christie and the Missing Eleven Days, Jared Cade, Publisher: Peter Owen Ltd, 1997, ISBN 978-0-7206-1280-6
  19. ^ a b Thompson, Laura. Agatha Christie: An English Mystery. London: Headline Review. 2008. ISBN 978-0-7553-1488-1.
  20. ^ Christie, Come Tell Me How You Live (Chapter 2, page 45-46 of 1983 edition) ISBN 0-370-30563-9
  21. ^ jbottero; "Agatha Christie's Hotel Pera Palace" http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/51232/ 5 June 2008 23:08:11
  22. ^ Agatha Christie: A Reader's Companion –Vanessa Wagstaff and Stephen Poole, Aurum Press Ltd. 2004. Page 14. ISBN 1-84513-015-4.
  23. ^ "Thallium poisoning in fact and fiction" http://www.pharmj.com/pdf/comment/pj_20061125_onlooker.pdf
  24. ^ London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 40669. p. 11. 30 December 1955. Retrieved 7 September 2009.
  25. ^ "Biography: Agatha Christie" Retrieved 22 February 2009; http://www.illiterarty.com/authors/biography-agatha-christie
  26. ^ London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 45262. p. 7. 31 December 1970. Retrieved 7 September 2009.
  27. ^ London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 44600. p. 6300. 31 May 1968. Retrieved 7 September 2009.
  28. ^ Kingston, Anne. "The ultimate whodunit", Maclean's. 2 April 2009. (Retrieved 28 August 2009.)
  29. ^ Boswell, Randy. "Study finds possible dementia for Agatha Christie", The Ottawa Citizen. 6 April 2009. (Retrieved 28 August 2009.)
  30. ^ Devlin, Kate (4 April 2009). "Agatha Christie 'had Alzheimer's disease when she wrote final novels'". The Daily Telegraph (London). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5101619/Agatha-Christie-had-Alzheimers-disease-when-she-wrote-final-novels.html. Retrieved 28 August 2009. 
  31. ^ Flood, Alison (3 April 2009). "Study claims Agatha Christie had Alzheimer's". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/apr/03/agatha-christie-alzheimers-research. Retrieved 28 August 2009. 
  32. ^ "Deaths England and Wales 1984–2006". Findmypast.com. http://www.findmypast.com/BirthsMarriagesDeaths.jsp. Retrieved 9 March 2010. [dead link]
  33. ^ a b Mills, Selina (15 September 2008). "BBC:Dusty clues to Christie unearthed". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7612000/7612534.stm. Retrieved 9 March 2010. 
  34. ^ "Agatha Christie – Her Detectives and Other Characters" Retrieved 22 February 2009 http://www.christiemystery.co.uk/detectives.html
  35. ^ Aldiss, Brian. "BBC Radio 4 –Factual –Desert Island Discs". bbc.com. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/desertislanddiscs_20070128.shtml. Retrieved 22 February 2009. 
  36. ^ Wilson, Edmund. "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" The New Yorker. 20 January 1945.
  37. ^ Christopher Hitchens. Hitch-22. Hachette. . Hitchens goes on to critique Christie's writing style as well, opining "There must be some connection between the general nullity of Christie's prose and the tendency of her detectives to take Jewishness as a symptom of crime."
  38. ^ Pendergast, Bruce (2004). Everyman's Guide to the Mysteries of Agatha Christie. Victoria, BC, Canada: Trafford. p. 399. ISBN 1-4120-2304-1. 
  39. ^ "Kojak Budapesten" 1990. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081006/plotsummary
  40. ^ Thompson, Laura. "Agatha Christie: How should a biographer set about unravelling the mystery?" The Independent. 9 September 2007. Retrieved 14 November 2010.
  41. ^ a b c d e [2][dead link]
  42. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=rzNSyfG3QrAC&pg=PA122#v=onepage&q&f=false Macaskill, Hilary and Mathew Prichard. Agatha Christie at Home. London: Frances Lincoln Ltd., 2009. ISBN 978-0-7112-3029-3.

References

  • Christie, Agatha (1977). Agatha Christie: An Autobiography. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company. ISBN 0-396-07516-9. 

Further reading

Articles

Books

  • Barnard, Robert (1980). A Talent to Deceive –An Appreciation of Agatha Christie. London: Collins. ISBN 0-00-216190-7.  Reprinted as New York: Mysterious Press, 1987.
  • Osborne, Charles (1982). The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie. London: Collins. 
  • Thompson, Laura (2007). Agatha Christie : An English Mystery. London: Headline Review. ISBN 0-7553-1487-5. 

External links


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