120 years ago Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller, Lady Mallowan, universally known as Agatha Christie, was born. Her father was an American stockbroker, her mother was a member of the good English society and gave her her education together with her grandmother and the house governesses.
Curiously at first, Agatha wanted to pursue a career in music so she went to Paris and entered finishing school but luckily for her many fans she wasn’t successful and gave up that career.
Back in England, Agatha met Archibald Christie, one of the first Royal Flying Corps pilots, who became her first husband. During World War I, she worked in the Torquay, where she learned a lot about drugs and particularly poisons, a knowledge that inspired her to write detective stories. That knowledge was improved during World War II when Agatha worked in the pharmacy at University College Hospital of University College in London.
Agatha reached professional success but had personal problems when her mother died and the split from her first husband. She kept on using his surname after the divorce because at that time everybody knew her as Agatha Christie,
Agatha’s career went on with great success until her death on January 12, 1976. In 1971 she was promoted Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
There was an occasion when life and fiction mixed up: in 1926 after her first husband asked her for divorce she disappeared for eleven days. At the time she was already famous so the search for her involved all the nation and eventually, she was found in Harrogate, in northern England. Agatha claimed she didn’t remember what happened during those days and in time many people speculated about the events of those days. Some years ago that story was reinterpreted with a science fiction twist in “Doctor Who” episode “The Unicorn and the Wasp”, a homage to Agatha Christie full of innuendos to her stories.
Actually, Agatha Christie also wrote some biographical and love romances under the name of Mary Westmacott but they weren’t as successful as her detective stories, which in many cases are considered absolute classics still read by millions of people around the world.
