agatha christie part two

The Life and Times of Agatha Christie, Part Two.

She met her first husband, Lt. Archie Christie in Torquay. After attending a concert at the Pavilion they returned to Ashfield where he proposed marriage. Married on Christmas Eve 1914 they enjoyed their honeymoon night at Torquay's Grand Hotel before Archie left to fight in the First World War.

It was whilst Archie was serving in France during the first World War that Agatha began working as a nurse for the Red Cross Hospital in Torquay's Town Hall. She was later transferred to the dispensary where she qualified as a pharmacist and acquired her detailed knowledge of poisons - central to the plot of 'The Mysterious Affair at Styles' (1920) her first published novel.


The world around her in Torquay and elsewhere was full of people and places that would feature in her works. In 1915 Torquay became home to a number of refugees from German occupied Belgium and one small Belgian, spotted by Agatha on a tram, became the model for Hercule Poirot her most famous detective. The name Hercule is a pun on the small stature of this famous detective.

Agatha and Archie had one daughter, Rosalind born in 1919, but sadly the marriage became an unhappy one, ending in divorce in 1928. Determined to move forward, Agatha developed another of her life's many interests by visiting an archaeological dig in Iraq. It was on her second dig that she met the charming archaeologist Max Mallowan, 14 years her junior, and they married in 1930. Agatha continued to join him on many digs in the Middle East and her fascination with the archaeology and lifestyle of the great explorers were to inspire a number of her later works including Death on the Nile.

Max Mallowan's contribution to archaeology was honoured in 1960 with a CBE and in 1968 with a Knighthood, giving them the titles Sir Max and Lady Mallowan. In 1971 Agatha was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Mr and Mrs Mallowan bought the estate at Greenway in 1938 as their summer residence. Already a prominent house with a renowned botanical collection, the house became a perfect second home for Agatha and her family. They were all inveterate collectors and the house was filled with a collection of antiquities gathered during their extensive travels. Agatha never worked at Greenway but she would read her current manuscript to the family before it was published. Agatha's daughter, Rosalind, moved to Greenway in 1968 and lived there until her death in 2004.

In 1962 Christie had tried to save her beloved Ashfield from development and was disappointed to visit the location later to find that only a single monkey puzzle tree remained. Ashfield may have been lost to development but Rosalind and her family were determined that Greenway would be preserved. They gifted the estate to the National Trust in 1999. The gardens and the house are open to the public and further details can be found at www.nationaltrust.org.uk.


In 2006 a sale of treasures from her South Devon home made £303,000. A first edition of Death on the Nile was the top selling book in the auction reaching a price of £2,400!


Agatha Christie died on the 12th of January 1976 at the age of 85. She had published 79 crime novels, 19 plays and 6 romantic novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Described by the Guinness Book of Records as the best selling writer of books of all time she published one billion books in the English language and a further one billion in 43 other languages.

Christie's Grandson, Mathew Prichard is now Chairman of the company that owns the right to her works. Agatha loved her grandson, regularly sending him advance copies of her books while he was away at school and even giving him the copyright to The Mousetrap as a present for his tenth birthday.