15 September 1890: Agatha Christie is born

In 1971 Agatha Christie was elevated to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for her contribution to literature. [1]

On 15 September 1890, Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay, Devon. She would become the world’s bestselling novelist, the “Queen of Crime”, and the creator of two of literature’s most famous detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.

Agatha’s childhood was a happy and imaginative one. The youngest of three children, with much older siblings, she often entertained herself with invented companions and stories. She wrote her first poem at ten, loved mathematics and puzzles, and was also a talented pianist, though too shy to contemplate a career on the concert platform. Her comfortable childhood changed when her father died while she was still young. She later attended finishing school in Paris and travelled with her mother to Egypt, where the places and atmosphere she encountered would eventually find their way into her fiction.

Shortly before the First World War she met handsome airman Archibald Christie, who “roared into her life on his motorbike”. They married in 1914. While Archie was serving at the front, Agatha worked in the dispensary at Torquay Hospital. Her knowledge of medicines, doses and poisons would prove remarkably useful for a future writer of murder mysteries.

A challenge from her sister prompted Agatha to attempt to write a detective story. After several rejections, her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was finally published in 1920. It introduced a small, precise Belgian detective named Hercule Poirot. Agatha could hardly have guessed just how famous he would become — or how thoroughly tired of him she would eventually grow.

The 1920s brought success, travel and upheaval. Agatha and Archie toured South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii, where they even learned to surf. But the marriage deteriorated, and in 1926, following her mother’s death and Archie’s request for a divorce, Agatha Christie famously disappeared for eleven days. Two years later her marriage ended.

Then came a happier chapter. While travelling to archaeological digs she met the archaeologist Max Mallowan, fourteen years her junior. They married in 1930, beginning a partnership that would impact both her life and her fiction.

Agatha Christie wrote sixty-six detective novels and fourteen short-story collections. Few writers have entertained so many readers, in so many languages, for so long.