Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Mallowan, known to the world as Agatha Christie, was born on 15 September 1890 in Torquay, Devon, into an upper-middle-class family and educated largely at home. She died on 12 January 1976. Christie is best known as the author of 66 detective novels and 14 short-story collections, most featuring her iconic sleuths Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, and the duo Tommy and Tuppence. Her first novel, *The Mysterious Affair at Styles* (1920), introduced Poirot after six initial rejections. She also wrote the world’s longest-running play, *The Mousetrap*, which opened in London’s West End in 1952 and continues today. Her marriage to archaeologist Max Mallowan in 1930 took her to Middle Eastern digs, where she absorbed details that enriched her fiction. During both world wars, she worked in hospital dispensaries, gaining the knowledge of poisons that became a hallmark of her plots. Christie also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Her novel *And Then There Were None* has sold roughly 100 million copies, and she remains the best-selling novelist of all time, with over two billion books sold. She is often called the "Queen of Crime," a title now trademarked by her estate.