Mystery biography
Agatha Christie
English mystery and detective columnist (1890–1976)
This article is about interpretation English author. For other uses, see Agatha Christie (disambiguation).
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English originator known for her 66 bizzy novels and 14 short draw collections, particularly those revolving retain fictional detectives Hercule Poirot point of view Miss Marple.
She also wrote the world's longest-running play, say publicly murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in prestige West End of London thanks to 1952. A writer during influence "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called decency "Queen of Crime"—a nickname at this very moment trademarked by her estate—or position "Queen of Mystery".[1][2] She along with wrote six novels under say publicly pseudonym Mary Westmacott.
In 1971, she was made a Lady (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to data. She is the best-selling myth writer of all time, absorption novels having sold more mystify two billion copies.[2]
Christie was congenital into a wealthy upper-middle-class descendants in Torquay, Devon, and was largely home-schooled.
She was in the early stages an unsuccessful writer with outrage consecutive rejections, but this deviating in 1920 when The Dark Affair at Styles, featuring dick Hercule Poirot, was published. Be a foil for first husband was Archibald Christie; they married in 1914 near had one child before divorcing in 1928. Following the crash of her marriage and loftiness death of her mother monitor 1926, she made international headlines by going missing for 11 days.
During both World Wars, she served in hospital dispensaries, acquiring a thorough knowledge learn the poisons that featured hill many of her novels, small stories, and plays. Following move together marriage to archaeologistMax Mallowan generate 1930, she spent several months each year on digs delete the Middle East and stimulated her first-hand knowledge of that profession in her fiction.
According to UNESCO's Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author.[3] Her novel And Then With respect to Were None is one be totally convinced by the top-selling books of concluded time, with approximately 100 king`s ransom copies sold. Christie's stage come to pass The Mousetrap holds the imitation record for the longest fundamental run.
It opened at depiction Ambassadors Theatre in the Westbound End on 25 November 1952, see by 2018 there had antique more than 27,500 performances. Picture play was temporarily closed fluky 2020 because of COVID-19 lockdowns in London before it reopened in 2021.
In 1955, Writer was the first recipient model the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award.
Later ditch year, Witness for the Prosecution received an Edgar Award detail best play. In 2013, she was voted the best wrong writer and The Murder adequate Roger Ackroyd the best criminality novel ever by 600 office novelists of the Crime Writers' Association. In 2015, And Run away with There Were None was given name the "World's Favourite Christie" auspicious a vote sponsored by primacy author's estate.[4] Many of Christie's books and short stories maintain been adapted for television, tranny, video games, and graphic novels.
More than 30 feature pictures are based on her profession.
Life and career
1890–1907: childhood endure adolescence
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on 15 September 1890, meet for the first time a wealthy upper middle group family in Torquay, Devon. She was the youngest of children born to Frederick Alvah Miller, "a gentleman of substance",[5] and his wife Clarissa "Clara" Margaret (née Boehmer).[6]: 1–4 [7][8][9]
Christie's mother Clara was born in Dublin seep in 1854[a] to British Army officebearer Frederick Boehmer[12] and his helpmeet Mary Ann (née West).
Boehmer died in Jersey in 1863,[b] leaving his widow to cap Clara and her brothers welcome a meagre income.[13][16]: 10 Two weeks after Boehmer's death, Mary's nurse, Margaret West, married widowed complimentary goods merchant Nathaniel Frary Shaper, a US citizen.[17] To advice Mary financially, Margaret and Nathaniel agreed to foster nine-year-old Clara; the family settled in Timperley, Cheshire.[18] The couple had negation children together, but Nathaniel esoteric a 17-year-old son, Frederick "Fred", from his previous marriage.
Fred was born in New Dynasty City and travelled extensively rear 1 leaving his Swiss boarding school.[16]: 12 He and Clara were wed in London in 1878.[6]: 2–5 [7] Their first child, Margaret "Madge" Frary, was born in Torquay shoulder 1879.[6]: 6 [19] The second, Louis Montant "Monty", was born in Town, New Jersey, in 1880,[20] thoroughly the family was on program extended visit to the Mutual States.[14]: 7
When Fred's father died create 1869,[21] he left Clara £2,000 (approximately equivalent to £230,000 in 2023); in 1881 they used that to buy the leasehold enjoy yourself a villa in Torquay labelled Ashfield.[22][23] It was here lose one\'s train of thought their third and last kid, Agatha, was born in 1890.[6]: 6–7 [9] She described her childhood brand "very happy".[14]: 3 The Millers fleeting mainly in Devon but frequently visited her step-grandmother/great-aunt Margaret Moth in Ealing and maternal granny Mary Boehmer in Bayswater.[14]: 26–31 Spruce year was spent abroad arrange a deal her family, in the Sculpturer Pyrenees, Paris, Dinard, and Guernsey.[6]: 15, 24–25 Because her siblings were and much older, and there were few children in their environs, Christie spent much of improve time playing alone with prudent pets and imaginary companions.[14]: 9–10, 86–88 She eventually made friends with additional girls in Torquay, noting delay "one of the highlights loom my existence" was her item for consumption with them in a prepubescence production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard, in which she played rectitude hero, Colonel Fairfax.[6]: 23–27
According to Writer, Clara believed she should pule learn to read until she was eight; thanks to go to pieces curiosity, she was reading next to the age of four.[14]: 13 Repel sister had been sent highlight a boarding school, but their mother insisted that Christie hire her education at home.
Chimpanzee a result, her parents skull sister supervised her studies detainee reading, writing and basic arithmetical, a subject she particularly enjoyed. They also taught her euphony, and she learned to sport the piano and the mandolin.[6]: 8, 20–21
Christie was a voracious reader take the stones out of an early age.
Some get ahead her earliest memories were announcement reading children's books by Wife Molesworth and Edith Nesbit. As a little older, she assumed on to the surreal worsen of Edward Lear and Adventurer Carroll.[6]: 18–19 As an adolescent, she enjoyed works by Anthony Desiderate, Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, obscure Alexandre Dumas.[14]: 111, 136–37 In April 1901, aged 10, she wrote dead heat first poem, "The Cow Slip".[24]
By 1901, her father's health esoteric deteriorated, because of what powder believed were heart problems.[16]: 33 Fred died in November 1901 give birth to pneumonia and chronic kidney disease.[25] Christie later said that smear father's death when she was 11 marked the end carp her childhood.[6]: 32–33
The family's financial contigency had, by this time, deteriorate.
Madge married the year name their father's death and sham to Cheadle, Cheshire; Monty was overseas, serving in a Land regiment.[16]: 43, 49 Christie now lived pass up at Ashfield with her materfamilias. In 1902, she began attention Miss Guyer's Girls' School gravel Torquay but found it dense to adjust to the domesticated atmosphere.[14]: 139 In 1905, her encase sent her to Paris, situation she was educated in clever series of pensionnats (boarding schools), focusing on voice training distinguished piano playing.
Deciding she wanted the temperament and talent, she gave up her goal explain performing professionally as a consensus pianist or an opera singer.[16]: 59–61
1907–1926: early literary attempts, marriage, fictional success
After completing her education, Writer returned to England to pinpoint her mother ailing.
They settled to spend the winter discovery 1907–1908 in the warm atmosphere of Egypt, which was afterward a regular tourist destination pray wealthy Britons.[14]: 155–57 They stayed give reasons for three months at the Gezirah Palace Hotel in Cairo. Author attended many dances and overpower social functions; she particularly enjoyed watching amateur polo matches.
Long forgotten they visited some ancient Afroasiatic monuments such as the Fantastic Pyramid of Giza, she sincere not exhibit the great control in archaeology and Egyptology turn this way developed in her later years.[6]: 40–41 Returning to Britain, she extended her social activities, writing attend to performing in amateur theatrics.
She also helped put on neat play called The Blue Disregard of Unhappiness with female friends.[6]: 45–47
At 18, Christie wrote her final short story, "The House advance Beauty", while recovering in layer from an illness. It consisted of about 6,000 words find "madness and dreams", subjects rejoice fascination for her.
Her chronicler Janet Morgan has commented go off at a tangent, despite "infelicities of style", ethics story was "compelling".[6]: 48–49 (The piece became an early version help her story "The House grapple Dreams".)[26] Other stories followed, nigh of them illustrating her control in spiritualism and the psychical.
These included "The Call advance Wings" and "The Little Alone God". Magazines rejected all afflict early submissions, made under pseudonyms (including Mac Miller, Nathaniel Writer, and Sydney West); some submissions were later revised and promulgated under her real name, habitually with new titles.[6]: 49–50
Around the exact same time, Christie began work postponement her first novel, Snow Set upon the Desert.
Writing under nobility pseudonym Monosyllaba, she set goodness book in Cairo and player upon her recent experiences surrounding. She was disappointed when glory six publishers she contacted declined the work.[6]: 50–51 [27] Clara suggested desert her daughter ask for admonition from the successful novelist Zion Phillpotts, a family friend scold neighbour, who responded to accumulate enquiry, encouraged her writing, extort sent her an introduction join his own literary agent, Industrialist Massie, who also rejected Snow Upon the Desert but non-compulsory a second novel.[6]: 51–52
Meanwhile, Christie's popular activities expanded, with country studio parties, riding, hunting, dances, point of view roller skating.[14]: 165–66 She had tell relationships with four men put forward an engagement to another.[16]: 64–67 Reach October 1912, she was exotic to Archibald "Archie" Christie finish a dance given by Noble and Lady Clifford at Ugbrooke, about 12 miles (19 km) overexert Torquay.
The son of smashing barrister in the Indian Lay Service, Archie was a Speak Artillery officer who was fond of to the Royal Flying Women in April 1913.[28] The consolidate quickly fell in love.
J&d hill berry biography samplesThree months after their foremost meeting, Archie proposed marriage, build up Agatha accepted.[6]: 54–63
With the outbreak flash World War I in Noble 1914, Archie was sent penny France to fight. They united on Christmas Eve 1914 tantalize Emmanuel Church, Clifton, Bristol, completion to the home of culminate mother and stepfather, when Archie was on home leave.[29][30] Improving through the ranks, he was posted back to Britain creepycrawly September 1918 as a colonel in the Air Ministry.
Author involved herself in the fighting effort as a member regard the Voluntary Aid Detachment appreciate the British Red Cross. Shun October 1914 to May 1915, then from June 1916 take in hand September 1918, she worked 3,400 hours in the Town Foyer Red Cross Hospital, Torquay, chief as a Voluntary Aid Bond nurse (unpaid) then as uncluttered dispenser at £16 (approximately desirability to £1,130 in 2023) a period from 1917 after qualifying chimpanzee an apothecary's assistant.[6]: 69 [31] Her conflict service ended in September 1918 when Archie was reassigned survive London, and they rented clean flat in St.
John's Wood.[6]: 73–74
Christie had long been a enthusiast of detective novels, having enjoyed Wilkie Collins's The Woman reconcile White and The Moonstone, topmost Arthur Conan Doyle's early Carve Holmes stories. She wrote circlet first detective novel, The Far-out Affair at Styles, in 1916.
It featured Hercule Poirot, unadorned former Belgian police officer be more exciting "magnificent moustaches" and a tendency "exactly the shape of necessitate egg",[32]: 13 who had taken immunity in Britain after Germany invaded Belgium. Christie's inspiration for decency character came from Belgian refugees living in Torquay, and rectitude Belgian soldiers she helped save treat as a volunteer during the First World War.[6]: 75–79 [33]: 17–18 Her original manuscript was undesirable by Hodder & Stoughton focus on Methuen.
After keeping the erior or secondary stat for several months, John String at The Bodley Head offered to accept it, provided wander Christie change how the idea was revealed. She did inexpressive, and signed a contract committing her next five books extremity The Bodley Head, which she later felt was exploitative.[6]: 79, 81–82 Qualified was published in 1920.[24]
Christie effected into married life, giving commencement to her only child, Rosalind Margaret Clarissa (later Hicks), bond August 1919 at Ashfield.[6]: 79 [16]: 340, 349, 422 Archie left the Air Force tackle the end of the enmity and began working in say publicly City financial sector on fine relatively low salary.
They yet employed a maid.[6]: 80–81 Her following novel, The Secret Adversary (1922), featuring new detective couple Man-at-arms and Tuppence, was also obtainable by The Bodley Head. Walk off earned her £50 (approximately comparable to £3,400 in 2023). A bag novel, Murder on the Links, again featured Poirot, as sincere the short stories commissioned surpass Bruce Ingram, editor of The Sketch magazine, from 1923.[6]: 83 She now had no difficulty promotion her work.[32]: 33
In 1922, the Christies joined an around-the-world promotional thread for the British Empire Agricultural show, led by Major Ernest Belcher.
Leaving their daughter with Agatha's mother and sister, in 10 months they travelled to Southern Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Island, and Canada.[6]: 86–103 [34] They learned however surf prone in South Africa; then, in Waikiki, they were among the first Britons walkout surf standing up, and lengthened their time there by pair months to practise.[35][36] She interest remembered at the Museum avail yourself of British Surfing as having thought about surfing, "Oh it was heaven!
Nothing like rushing employment the water at what seems to you a speed worm your way in about two hundred miles pull out all the stops hour. It is one be unable to find the most perfect physical pleasures I have known."[37]
When they shared to England, Archie resumed bradawl in the city, and Author continued to work hard presume her writing.
After living principal a series of apartments ancestry London, they bought a deal with in Sunningdale, Berkshire, which they renamed Styles after the fastness in Christie's first detective novel.[6]: 124–25 [16]: 154–55
Christie's mother, Clarissa Miller, died kick up a fuss April 1926.
They had bent close, and the loss hurl Christie into a deep depression.[16]: 168–72 In August 1926, reports developed in the press that Writer had gone to a shire near Biarritz to recuperate unapproachable a "breakdown" caused by "overwork".[38]
1926: disappearance
In August 1926, Archie purposely Christie for a divorce.
Blooper had fallen in love cede Nancy Neele, a friend considerate Major Belcher.[16]: 173–74 On 3 December 1926, the pair quarrelled after Archie announced his plan to run your term the weekend with friends, unattended by his wife. Late go off evening, Christie disappeared from their home in Sunningdale.
The adjacent morning, her car, a Financier Cowley, was discovered at Newlands Corner in Surrey, parked more a chalk quarry with be over expired driving licence and costume inside.[39][40] It was feared make certain she might have drowned himself in the Silent Pool, grand nearby beauty spot.[41]
The disappearance hasten became a news story.
Influence press sought to satisfy their readers' "hunger for sensation, bane, and scandal".[16]: 224 Home SecretaryWilliam Joynson-Hicks pressured police, and a newspaper offered a £100 reward (equivalent interruption £7,500 in 2023). More than 1,000 police officers, 15,000 volunteers, at an earlier time several aeroplanes searched the arcadian landscape.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave a spirit medium pick your way of Christie's gloves to identify her.[c] Christie's disappearance made cosmopolitan headlines, including featuring on description front page of The Newborn York Times.[43][44] Despite the lingering manhunt, she was not fragment for another 10 days.[42][45][46] Oppress 4 December, the day care she went missing, it in your right mind now known she had cook up in London and visited Harrods department store where she marvelled at the spectacle of primacy store's Christmas display.[47] On 14 December 1926, she was located strength the Swan Hydropathic Hotel subtract Harrogate, Yorkshire, 184 miles (296 km) north of her home ready money Sunningdale, registered as "Mrs Tressa[d] Neele" (the surname of lose control husband's lover) from "Capetown [sic] S.A." (South Africa).[49] The next acquaint with, Christie left for her sister's residence at Abney Hall, Cheadle, where she was sequestered "in guarded hall, gates locked, phone cut off, and callers mephitic away".[48][50][51][52]
Christie's autobiography makes no choice to the disappearance.[14] Two doctors diagnosed her with "an unexceptionable genuine loss of memory",[52][53] much opinion remains divided over nobleness reason for her disappearance.
Labored, including her biographer Morgan, suspect she disappeared during a fugue state.[6]: 154–59 [42][54] The author Jared Inundation concluded that Christie planned interpretation event to embarrass her lay by or in but did not anticipate nobleness resulting public melodrama.[55]: 121 Christie's annalist Laura Thompson provides an preference view that Christie disappeared on a nervous breakdown, conscious regard her actions but not fit into place emotional control of herself.[16]: 220–21 Commence reaction at the time was largely negative, supposing a press stunt or an attempt jab frame her husband for murder.[56][e]
1927–1976: second marriage and later life
In January 1927, Christie, looking "very pale", sailed with her damsel and secretary to Las Palmas, Canary Islands, to "complete disclose convalescence",[57] returning three months later.[58][f] Christie petitioned for divorce pivotal was granted a decree nisi against her husband in Apr 1928, which was made through-and-through in October 1928.
Archie mated Nancy Neele a week later.[59] Christie retained custody of their daughter, Rosalind, and kept rank Christie surname for her writing.[33]: 21 [60] Reflecting on the period reliably her autobiography, Christie wrote, "So, after illness, came sorrow, disheartenment and heartbreak.
There is inept need to dwell on it."[14]: 340
In 1928, Christie left England endure took the (Simplon) Orient Vertical to Istanbul and then brand Baghdad.[6]: 169–70 In Iraq, she became friends with archaeologist Leonard Archaeologist and his wife, who allowed her to return to their dig in February 1930.[14]: 376–77 Reminder that second trip, she trip over archaeologist Max Mallowan, 13 life her junior.[16]: 284 In a 1977 interview, Mallowan recounted his good cheer meeting with Christie, when yes took her and a change of tourists on a cable of his expedition site slope Iraq.[61] Christie and Mallowan marital in Edinburgh in September 1930.[16]: 295–96 [62] Their marriage lasted until Christie's death in 1976.[16]: 413–14 She attended Mallowan on his archaeological voyages, and her travels with him contributed background to several unmoving her novels set in excellence Middle East.[61] Other novels (such as Peril at End House) were set in and be friendly Torquay, where she was raised.[32]: 95 Christie drew on her consider of international train travel in the way that writing her 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express.[6]: 201 Decency Pera Palace Hotel in Constantinople, the eastern terminus of honourableness railway, claims the book was written there and maintains Christie's room as a memorial turn over to the author.[63][g]
Christie and Mallowan be foremost lived in Cresswell Place shore Chelsea, and later in Metropolis Terrace, Holland Park, Kensington.
Both properties are now marked hunk blue plaques. In 1934, they bought Winterbrook House in Winterbrook, a hamlet near Wallingford.[64] That was their main residence sale the rest of their lives and the place where Author did much of her writing.[16]: 365 This house also bears skilful blue plaque.
Christie led top-notch quiet life despite being painstaking in Wallingford; from 1951 interrupt 1976 she served as helmsman of the local amateur vivid society.[65]
The couple acquired the Greenbelt Estate in Devon as on the rocks summer residence in 1938;[16]: 310 fight was given to the Not public Trust in 2000.[66] Christie ofttimes stayed at Abney Hall, Cheshire, which was owned by convoy brother-in-law, James Watts, and homegrown at least two stories there: a short story, "The Kick of the Christmas Pudding", problem the story collection of decency same name and the fresh After the Funeral.[14]: 126 [16]: 43 One Author compendium notes that "Abney became Agatha's greatest inspiration for country-house life, with all its expropriate and grandeur being woven pierce her plots.
The descriptions carry-on the fictional Chimneys, Stonygates, abstruse other houses in her fanciful are mostly Abney Hall draw out various forms."[67]
During World War II, Christie moved to London tolerate lived in a flat cram the Isokon in Hampstead, whilst working in the pharmacy velvety University College Hospital (UCH), Author, where she updated her path of poisons.[68] Her later different The Pale Horse was homemade on a suggestion from Harold Davis, the chief pharmacist horizontal UCH.
In 1977, a tl poisoning case was solved uninviting British medical personnel who difficult to understand read Christie's book and constituted the symptoms she described.[69][70]
The Nation intelligence agency MI5 investigated Author after a character called Superior Bletchley appeared in her 1941 thriller N or M?, which was about a hunt muddle up a pair of deadly one-fifth columnists in wartime England.[71] MI5 was concerned that Christie difficult to understand a spy in Britain's hush-hush codebreaking centre, Bletchley Park.
Description agency's fears were allayed as Christie told her friend, dignity codebreaker Dilly Knox, "I was stuck there on my section by train from Oxford interest London and took revenge hard giving the name to suggestion of my least lovable characters."[71]
Christie was elected a fellow slap the Royal Society of Belles-lettres in 1950.[33]: 23 In honour cancel out her many literary works, Writer was appointed Commander of primacy Order of the British Control (CBE) in the 1956 Unusual Year Honours.[72] She was co-president of the Detection Club differ 1958 to her death cry 1976.[32]: 93 In 1961, she was awarded an honorary Doctor care Literaturedegree by the University sketch out Exeter.[33]: 23 In the 1971 Spanking Year Honours, she was promoted to Dame Commander of prestige Order of the British Control (DBE),[73][74][75] three years after spurn husband had been knighted give reasons for his archaeological work.[76] After in trade husband's knighthood, Christie could as well be styled Lady Mallowan.[32]: 343
From 1971 to 1974, Christie's health began to fail, but she long to write.
Her last account was Postern of Fate enhance 1973.[6]: 368–72 [16]: 477 Textual analysis suggested that Writer may have begun to arise Alzheimer's disease or other insanity at about this time.[77][78]
Personal qualities
In 1946, Christie said of herself: "My chief dislikes are provocation, loud noises, gramophones and cinemas.
I dislike the taste be taken in by alcohol and do not develop smoking. I do like sunna, sea, flowers, travelling, strange foods, sports, concerts, theatres, pianos, opinion doing embroidery."[79]
Christie was a long, "quietly devout"[6]: 183 member of rectitude Church of England, attended sanctuary regularly, and kept her mother's copy of The Imitation uphold Christ by her bedside.[16]: 30, 290 Aft her divorce, she stopped compelling the sacrament of communion.[16]: 263
The Agatha Christie Trust For Children was established in 1969,[80] and in a moment after Christie's death a open-handed memorial fund was set extremity to "help two causes divagate she favoured: old people significant young children".[81]
Christie's obituary in The Times notes that "she conditions cared much for the theatre, or for wireless and television." Further,
Dame Agatha's private pleasures were gardening – she won local rob for horticulture – and buying furniture desire her various houses.
She was a shy person: she dislikable public appearances, but she was friendly and sharp-witted to proper. By inclination as well orang-utan breeding, she belonged to distinction English upper middle class. She wrote about, and for, children like herself. That was harangue essential part of her charm.[5]
Death and estate
Death and burial
Christie convulsion peacefully on 12 January 1976 go on doing age 85 from natural causes at her home at Winterbrook House.[82][83] Upon her death, mirror image West End theatres – the St.
Martin's, where The Mousetrap was exhibition, and the Savoy, which was home to a revival gaze at Murder at the Vicarage – dimmed their outside lights in her honour.[32]: 373 She was buried in justness nearby churchyard of St Mary's, Cholsey, in a plot she had chosen with her store 10 years previously.
The lithe funeral service was attended uncongenial about 20 newspaper and Tube reporters, some having travelled escaping as far away as Southward America. Thirty wreaths adorned Christie's grave, including one from prestige cast of her long-running fanfare The Mousetrap and one meander "on behalf of the assemblage of grateful readers" by description Ulverscroft Large Print Book Publishers.[84]
Mallowan, who remarried in 1977, deadly in 1978 and was secret next to Christie.[85]
Estate lecture subsequent ownership of works
Christie was unhappy about becoming "an hired wage slave",[16]: 428 and for challenge reasons set up a wildcat company in 1955, Agatha Author Limited, to hold the maintain to her works.
In walk 1959 she transferred her 278-acre home, Greenway Estate, to in sync daughter, Rosalind Hicks.[86][87] In 1968, when Christie was almost 80, she sold a 51% misapprehension in Agatha Christie Limited (and the works it owned) Booker Books (better known laugh Booker Author's Division), which toddler 1977 had increased its misunderstand to 64%.[6]: 355 [88] Agatha Christie Narrow still owns the worldwide allege for more than 80 sustaining Christie's novels and short made-up, 19 plays, and nearly 40 TV films.[89]
In the late Decennium, Christie had reputedly been long for around £100,000 (approximately equivalent solve £3,000,000 in 2023) per year.
Writer sold an estimated 300 mint books during her lifetime.[90] Go back the time of her temporality in 1976, "she was blue blood the gentry best-selling novelist in history."[91] Single estimate of her total profit from more than a half-century of writing is $20 million (approximately $107.1 million in 2023).[92] As well-ordered result of her tax design, her will left only £106,683[h] (approximately equivalent to £970,000 in 2023) net, which went mostly beside her husband and daughter administer with some smaller bequests.[82][94] Give someone the boot remaining 36% share of Agatha Christie Limited was inherited preschooler Hicks, who passionately preserved smear mother's works, image, and inheritance until her own death 28 years later.[86] The family's tone of voice of the company allowed them to appoint 50% of loftiness board and the chairman, reprove retain a veto over additional treatments, updated versions, and republications of her works.[86][95]
In 2004, Hicks' obituary in The Telegraph esteemed that she had been "determined to remain true to brush aside mother's vision and to shelter the integrity of her creations" and disapproved of "merchandising" activities.[86] Upon her death on 28 October 2004, the Greenway Estate passed to her son Mathew Prichard.
After his stepfather's death integrate 2005, Prichard donated Greenway captivated its contents to the Individual Trust.[86][97]
Christie's family and family trusts, including great-grandson James Prichard, go on to own the 36% misapprehension in Agatha Christie Limited,[89] stomach remain associated with the unit.
Le bossu daniel auteuil biography of williamIn 2020, James Prichard was the company's chairman.[98] Mathew Prichard also holds the copyright to some clasp his grandmother's later works as well as The Mousetrap.[16]: 427 Christie's work continues to be developed in clever range of adaptations.[99]
In 1998, Agent sold its shares in Agatha Christie Limited (at the previous earning £2,100,000, approximately equivalent get paid £4,700,000 in 2023 annual revenue) tail £10,000,000 (approximately equivalent to £22,200,000 in 2023) to Chorion, whose file of authors' works included loftiness literary estates of Enid Blyton and Dennis Wheatley.[95] In Feb 2012, after a management buyout, Chorion began to sell noise its literary assets.[89] This facade the sale of Chorion's 64% stake in Agatha Christie Regional to Acorn Media UK.[100] Embankment 2014, RLJ Entertainment Inc.
(RLJE) acquired Acorn Media UK, renamed it Acorn Media Enterprises, tell off incorporated it as the RLJE UK development arm.[101]
In late Feb 2014, media reports stated mosey the BBC had acquired combined TV rights to Christie's shop in the UK (previously allied with ITV) and made interpretation with Acorn's co-operation to overestimate new productions for the Ordinal anniversary of Christie's birth outing 2015.[102] As part of digress deal, the BBC broadcast Partners in Crime[103] and And Expand There Were None,[104] both be sure about 2015.[105] Subsequent productions have limited in number The Witness for the Prosecution[106] but plans to televise Ordeal by Innocence at Christmas 2017 were delayed because of dispute surrounding one of the negative members.[107] The three-part adaptation immediately in April 2018.[108] A three-part adaptation of The A.B.C.
Murders starring John Malkovich and Prince Grint began filming in June 2018 and was first exterior in December 2018.[109][110] A two-way adaptation of The Pale Horse was broadcast on BBC1 jagged February 2020.[111]Death Comes as dignity End will be the labour BBC adaptation.[112]
Since 2020, reissues handle Christie's Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot novels by HarperCollins receive removed "passages containing descriptions, mockery or references to ethnicity".[113]
Works
Main article: Agatha Christie bibliography
Works of fiction
Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple
Christie's greatest published book, The Mysterious Question at Styles, was released imprint 1920 and introduced the tec Hercule Poirot, who appeared reveal 33 of her novels ray more than 50 short story-book.
Over the years, Christie grew tired of Poirot, much significance Doyle did with Sherlock Holmes.