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1. The Mysterious Affair at Ashfield

Agatha Christie is famous for her murder mysteries set in aristocratic country houses, and her childhood home, Ashfield, was just such a place: a large Victorian villa in Torquay, Devon, with a garden full of trees. Agatha was born there to Clara and Frederick Miller on 15 September 1890, but her idyllic childhood was cut short by the death of her father in November 1901. Unlike most of the deaths in her novels, Agatha’s father died of natural causes. The Millers were in financial difficulties at the time, possibly due to criminal mismanagement of their money by one of the trustees of the family fund.

John Moffat as the moustachioed Hercule Poirot.

2. Debut on the Nile

After sending Agatha to a succession of French finishing schools, in 1908 Clara decided that it was time for her daughter to be married. Due to their reduced financial circumstances, she planned a budget coming out party... at a hotel in Egypt! Agatha’s debut was a success, and after their return to England she was inundated with marriage proposals. In the end, her heart was captured by a dashing member of the Royal Flying Corps named Archibald Christie.

3. A War is Announced

Archie was mobilised in August 1914, but Agatha didn’t spend the war weeping for her fiancé. Between October 1914 and December 1916, she volunteered for the Red Cross, before training as a pharmacist at Torbay Hospital. It was here that Christie learned all about poisons, a recurrent trope in her books. Of her 66 detective novels, an astonishing 41 feature a murder or suicide by poison, and The Mysterious Affair at Styles, published in 1921, even includes a young woman who works as a pharmacy dispenser.

4. Live Man’s Folly

Agatha and Archie married while he was home on leave in December 1914, but could not live together until September 1918. Agatha threw herself into her new role as wife: she tried to be a good cook, started a typing and book-keeping course, and in August 1919 the couple’s only child, Rosalind, was born. But Archie declared his wife’s cooking “uninteresting” and her soufflés “indigestible”, and he began to spend more and more time on the golf course. Maybe it’s no coincidence that several of Christie’s plots feature murders on golf courses!

5. Surfing is Easy

In 1922, Agatha and Archie spent nine months travelling the world for his job. As part of this they enjoyed a month-long holiday in Honolulu, where Agatha learnt to surf, describing it as “one of the most perfect physical pleasures I have known”.

6. Appointment with a Publisher

In 1919, Christie had sold The Mysterious Affair at Styles to the publisher John Lane. Recognising her lack of industry experience, Lane trapped her with a five-book deal which earned her scant royalties. Over the course of the 1920s, with her growing critical and commercial success, Christie grew frustrated with this deal. In January 1924, she signed a new contract with the publisher William Collins, Sons & Co, and in 1926 they published one of her best-known books: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

7. Three Act Tragedy

1926 was a bumper year for Christie professionally, but personally it was a disaster. Her beloved mother, Clara, died in April. Archie was unsupportive, and did not even attend the funeral. As her mental health worsened, Christie also began suffering from writer’s block. To complete this trio of personal difficulties, Archie revealed that he was in love with a woman named Nancy Neele. Nancy was gorgeous, nearly a decade younger than Agatha and, adding insult to injury, a huge golf fan.

Joan Hickson as the savvy Miss Marple.

8. At the Swan Hotel

Lots of people have heard of the famous disappearance of Agatha Christie. In December 1926, having discovered that Archie was spending the weekend with Nancy and some mutual friends, Christie left their house and disappeared. She was found, ten days later, at the Swan Hotel in Harrogate. Although this event spawned breathless speculation – was she trying to frame her cheating husband for her murder? Was it a hoax to drum up publicity for her books? The truth is much more prosaic, and sadder – Christie appears to have suffered from a breakdown and some kind of memory loss. Afterwards, she began to see a psychiatrist and slowly recovered.

9. Romance Under the Sun

In October 1928 Agatha and Archie got divorced, and Archie married Nancy Neele just a week later. On a trip to the ancient Sumerian city of Ur, as she tried to recover from her broken marriage, Christie met a young archaeologist named Max Mallowan. The two quickly fell in love, and they were married on 11 September, 1930. The marriage certificate recorded their ages as 31 (Max) and 37 (Agatha). In reality, he was 26 and she was 39.

10. Excavations in Mesopotamia

Following their marriage, Christie supported her new husband in his archaeological career. She took a course in archaeological drawing so that she could help him record his finds, and in 1933 she helped fund his first independent dig in Iraq. She even got him a book deal and work with her publisher.

11. Ordeal by Tax Laws

Throughout her career, Christie struggled to manage her financial affairs, and by the 1940s she was in trouble with the tax authorities in both the UK and US. These money worries motivated Christie to continue writing into old age, and in 1968 she sold 51% of her shares in Agatha Christie Limited to Booker Books. The price? Paying off the huge tax bill she had just received!

12. Death Comes at the End

Agatha Christie died “gently and peacefully” on 12 January 1976. At the time of her death, two of her plays – The Mousetrap and Murder at the Vicarage – were playing in the West End. To mark her passing, the theatres dimmed their lights, and the audiences stood in silent tribute to such an extraordinary writer.

Have you managed to identify all twelve Agatha Christie titles? Check your answers below!

1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles

2. Death on the Nile

3. A Murder is Announced

4. Dead Man’s Folly

5. Murder is Easy

6. Appointment with Death

7. Three Act Tragedy

8. At Bertram’s Hotel

9. Death Under the Sun

10. Murder in Mesopotamia

11. Ordeal by Innocence

12. Death Comes at the End