Young Agatha Christie

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In the 1950s, "the theatre... engaged much of Agatha's attention." [138] She next adapted her short radio play into The Mousetrap, which premiered in the West End in 1952, produced by Peter Saunders and starring Richard Attenborough as the original Detective Sergeant Trotter. [136] Her expectations for the play were not high; she believed it would run no more than eight months. [12] :500 The Mousetrap has long since made theatrical history as the world's longest-running play, staging its 27,500th performance in September 2018. [136] [139] [140] [141] The play temporarily closed in March 2020, when all UK theatres shut due to the coronavirus pandemic, [142] [143] before it re-opened on 17 May 2021. [144] Simpson, Craig (25 March 2023). "Agatha Christie classics latest to be rewritten for modern sensitivities". The Telegraph . Retrieved 26 March 2023. Gerald, Michael C. (1993). The Poisonous Pen of Agatha Christie. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0292728646. McClurg, Jocelyn (18 May 2016). "Agatha Christie hits USA Today's list". USA Today. Archived from the original on 4 July 2020 . Retrieved 4 May 2020. But by December 1926, her marriage to Archie Christie was in trouble. She herself, she later wrote, was “at the beginning of a nervous breakdown”. The couple had moved to a grand 12-bedroom house in Sunningdale, Berkshire, which they named Styles, but Archie was often absent and Agatha was increasingly unhappy there. The death of her beloved mother, and Archie’s unsympathetic response (he didn’t even go to the funeral), had strained their relationship almost to breaking point when Archie confessed that he was in love with someone else – a young woman called Nancy Neele – and wanted a divorce.

In the spotlight … Agatha Christie became a new kind of media celebrity. Photograph: Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy The History". The Mousetrap. Archived from the original on 19 January 2019 . Retrieved 25 April 2020. Phukan, Vikram (4 December 2018). "Everyone loves an old-fashioned murder mystery". The Hindu. Archived from the original on 20 May 2021 . Retrieved 29 August 2020. BBC Radio 4 Extra – Hercule Poirot – Episode guide". BBC. Archived from the original on 8 March 2021 . Retrieved 5 May 2020. Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie". The Home of Agatha Christie. Archived from the original on 10 April 2020 . Retrieved 3 May 2020.It is strange,” she said, that “the railway authorities there did not recall me, as I was covered with mud and I had smeared blood on my face from a cut on my hand.” Christie’s “disappearance” had the impact it did because of the 1920s context that saw a new kind of media celebrity being created. She wasn’t alone in becoming an author-as-celebrity. It may have been accidental, and deeply unpleasant, but it would also become a central plank of her massive success. Hogan, Michael (15 December 2019). "Agatha and the Curse of Ishtar review – A cut-price Christie for Christmas is still quite a treat". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Archived from the original on 6 January 2020 . Retrieved 29 April 2020.

So what should we believe? Christie reported that on that Saturday morning, while the police were investigating her abandoned car, she had “lost her memory”. With the help of a psychotherapist, she would later begin to put together a narrative of the movements she had blanked out. “I remember arriving at a big railway station,” she recalled, eventually, “and being surprised to learn it was Waterloo.” Unfortunately for Christie’s lasting reputation, many of her biographers, notably her male ones, have been as heavily invested in this narrative as the male police officers and journalists who made it into such a sensation at the time. “She set out deliberately – the facts shout it – to throw murder suspicion upon her husband,” says one of these writers.Acocella, Joan. "Queen of Crime". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 23 September 2020 . Retrieved 29 April 2020. Christie hinted at a nervous breakdown, saying to a woman with similar symptoms, "I think you had better be very careful; it is probably the beginning of a nervous breakdown." [12] :337 a b The Mystery of Agatha Christie – A Trip With David Suchet (Directed by Claire Lewins). Testimony Films (for ITV).

Flood, Alison (3 April 2009). "Study claims Agatha Christie had Alzheimer's". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 1 August 2009 . Retrieved 28 August 2009. Taylor, Jerome. "The Big Question: How big is the Agatha Christie industry, and what explains her enduring appeal?". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015 . Retrieved 6 March 2015. Birth Certificate. General Register Office for England and Wales, 1879 March Quarter, Newton Abbot, volume 5b, p. 162. Ella Creamer. " Agatha Christie statue takes seat on bench in Oxfordshire town". The Guardian, 11 September 2023.Christie died peacefully on 12January 1976 at age 85 from natural causes at her home at Winterbrook House. [79] [80] Upon her death, two West End theatres–the St. Martin's, where The Mousetrap was playing, and the Savoy, which was home to a revival of Murder at the Vicarage–dimmed their outside lights in her honour. [30] :373 She was buried in the nearby churchyard of St Mary's, Cholsey, in a plot she had chosen with her husband 10 years previously. The simple funeral service was attended by about 20 newspaper and TV reporters, some having travelled from as far away as South America. Thirty wreaths adorned Christie's grave, including one from the cast of her long-running play The Mousetrap and one sent "on behalf of the multitude of grateful readers" by the Ulverscroft Large Print Book Publishers. [81] Agatha Christie and Archaeology". Special Collections. Newcastle University. 3 October 2018. Archived from the original on 12 August 2020 . Retrieved 28 April 2020. Christie did not limit herself to quaint English villages–the action might take place on a small island ( And Then There Were None), an aeroplane ( Death in the Clouds), a train ( Murder on the Orient Express), a steamship ( Death on the Nile), a smart London flat ( Cards on the Table), a resort in the West Indies ( A Caribbean Mystery), or an archaeological dig ( Murder in Mesopotamia)–but the circle of potential suspects is usually closed and intimate: family members, friends, servants, business associates, fellow travellers. [123] :37 Stereotyped characters abound (the femme fatale, the stolid policeman, the devoted servant, the dull colonel), but these may be subverted to stymie the reader; impersonations and secret alliances are always possible. [123] :58 There is always a motive–most often, money: "There are very few killers in Christie who enjoy murder for its own sake." [14] :379,396 Christie was born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon, and was largely home-schooled. She was initially an unsuccessful writer with six consecutive rejections, but this changed in 1920 when The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring detective Hercule Poirot, was published. Her first husband was Archibald Christie; they married in 1914 and had one child before divorcing in 1928. Following the breakdown of her marriage and the death of her mother in 1926 she made international headlines by going missing for eleven days. During both World Wars, she served in hospital dispensaries, acquiring a thorough knowledge of the poisons that featured in many of her novels, short stories, and plays. Following her marriage to archaeologist Max Mallowan in 1930, she spent several months each year on digs in the Middle East and used her first-hand knowledge of this profession in her fiction.

Other authors claim Christie wrote Murder on the Orient Express whilst at a dig at Arpachiyah. [4] :206 [30] :111 Simpson, Craig (25 March 2023). "Agatha Christie classics latest to be rewritten for modern sensitivities". The Telegraph . Retrieved 29 March 2023. Les petits meurtres d'Agatha Christie". France TV (in French). Archived from the original on 22 December 2019 . Retrieved 3 May 2020.

12. Death Comes at the End

a b "Obituary. Dame Agatha Christie". The Times. 13 January 1976. p.16. 'My father,' she [Christie] recalled, 'was a gentleman of substance, and never did a handsturn in his life, and he was a most agreeable man.' Beehler, Sharon A. (1998). "Close vs. Closed Reading: Interpreting the Clues". The English Journal. 77 (6): 39–43. doi: 10.2307/818612. JSTOR 818612. Crime writer Agatha Christie dies". bbc. 12 January 1976. Archived from the original on 12 January 2021 . Retrieved 30 September 2020.