Agatha Christie is the bestselling crime writer of all time; she created two of the literature's most famous sleuths, Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple, and her many novels, short stories and plays have sold over a billion copies in the English language and been translated into over one hundred languages.
She was born in 1890 in Torquay into a comfortable lifestyle. In 1914 she married Lt Archibald Christie. She struggled to find a publisher for her first crime novel, but in 1920 The Bodley Head published The Mysterious Affair at Styles and from there her record breaking career took off. Six years later, Christie found out that her husband was having an affair, and, as was much reported at the time, she disappeared for several days. She divorced in 1928 and in 1930 married archaeologist Max Mallowan. She enjoyed a long and happy marriage and an unparalleled writing career until her death in 1976.
