With over two billion copies of her books in print, British novelist Agatha Christie—who was born in September 1890—rivals the best. Here are some not-so-known details of the famed writer’s life.
- Her mother was against her daughter learning how to read. Christie received formal education only after 15.
- She wrote her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, on a dare. The novel introduced readers to Hercule Poirot and was rejected by six publishers.
- During World War I, she worked as an apothecary’s assistant and handled a variety of poisons. Her interest led her to make poisons her preferred method of murder in many of her works.
- Miss Marple was modelled on her maternal grandmother
- She once famously described Poirot as a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep”. But because the public loved him, she refused to kill him off.
- When he finally did die, the Belgian detective was given a full-page obituary in The New York Times
- Christie’s famous play, The Mousetrap, began life as a 20-minute radio story. Almost seven decades on, it’s still being performed regularly. The play was written at the behest of Queen Mary in 1947.
- Christie disliked marmalade pudding so much that she used it as a murder accessory in her novel, A Pocket Full of Rye.
- She had something in common with Poirot—both suffered from seasickness
- She makes an appearance in the David Tennant Doctor Who episode ‘The Unicorn and the Wasp’. Christie helps the Doctor solve a series of murders that parallel her works and the board game Clue(do).
- She was averse to typing and would record her stories into a Dictaphone before having them typed