Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

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Naturalisation Papers Archived 24 October 2019 at the Wayback Machine: Miller, Nathaniel Frary, from the United States. The book was supposedly started on 2 April 1950 at the expedition house at Nimrud where she was working on the excavation of that ancient city with her second husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan. Consequently, there is no mention of her later works, the award of the DBE in 1971 or successes such as the 1974 film of Murder on the Orient Express.

As news of the famous author’s disappearance reached Harrogate, “Mrs Neele” was heard to observe that Mrs Christie was “a very elusive person. Christie settled into married life, giving birth to her only child, Rosalind Margaret Clarissa (later Hicks), in August 1919 at Ashfield. It’s true that some of Christie’s books contain racist and antisemitic caricatures offensive to modern readers, though whether that’s evidence of inner darkness rather than simply the inevitable product of her background is debatable.Within the 544 pages, the first appearance of her first husband, Archie Christie, does not take place until page 212 (as opposed to page 57 out of 394 in her official biography) and the death of Christie's mother in April 1926 (an event which triggered the events of that calamitous year in her life and which happened in her thirty-fifth year), does not occur until page 346.

She was the youngest of three children born to Frederick Alvah Miller, "a gentleman of substance", [3] and his wife Clarissa Margaret "Clara" Miller, née Boehmer. Christie always accompanied Mallowan on his excavations, making herself useful by photographing, cleaning, and recording finds; and restoring ceramics, which she especially enjoyed.The following morning, her car, a Morris Cowley, was discovered at Newlands Corner in Surrey, parked above a chalk quarry with an expired driving licence and clothes inside. Miss Jane Marple was introduced in a series of short stories that began publication in December 1927 and were subsequently collected under the title The Thirteen Problems. After her marriage to Mallowan in 1930, she accompanied him on annual expeditions, spending three to four months at a time in Syria and Iraq at excavation sites at Ur, Nineveh, Tell Arpachiyah, Chagar Bazar, Tell Brak, and Nimrud. f] Christie petitioned for divorce and was granted a decree nisi against her husband in April 1928, which was made absolute in October 1928.

She based at least two of her stories on the hall: the short story The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, and the novel After the Funeral. She eventually made friends with other girls in Torquay, noting that "one of the highlights of my existence" was her appearance with them in a youth production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard, in which she played the hero, Colonel Fairfax. Any biographer wishing to bring a new perspective to Christie’s story is therefore working within obvious limitations, not least that many of the most intimate and revealing letters written or received by her were destroyed by family or associates. Both Marple and Miller "always expected the worst of everyone and everything, and were, with almost frightening accuracy, usually proved right".And Then There Were None carries the 'closed society' type of murder mystery to extreme lengths," according to author Charles Osborne. The play was temporarily closed in 2020 because of COVID-19 lockdowns in London before it reopened in 2021. Two doctors diagnosed her with "an unquestionable genuine loss of memory", [49] [50] yet opinion remains divided over the reason for her disappearance. Since 2020, reissues of Christie's Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot novels by HarperCollins have removed "passages containing descriptions, insults or references to ethnicity". Spider's Web, an original work written for actress Margaret Lockwood at her request, premiered in the West End in 1954 and was also a hit.