130 years ago, master of crime Agatha Christie was born

It is 130 years since the birth of British crime writer Agatha Christie, who became popular with the characters of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Agatha Christie is considered the best-selling and translated author of all time. She has written about 80 books, which have sold more than two billion copies worldwide and translated into more than 100 languages.

Agatha Christie is considered the best-selling and translated author

of all time.

Agatha Christie is considered the best-selling and translated author of all time.

LONDON> Agatha Christie was born as Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller on September 15, 1890 in Torquay, England. Her father Frederich Alvah Miller was a wealthy American stockbroker, and Clarissa’s mother Margaret Boehmer was the daughter of a British military captain. Her father died when she was eleven years old. Her mother then taught her at home and encouraged her to write at an early age. At 16, she was sent to study singing and piano in Paris.

Working in pharmacy strongly influenced her writing

During World War I, Agatha worked in a hospital and later in a pharmacy. This work has strongly influenced her writing, as many murders in her novels occur with the help of poison.

Her first novel, The Mysterious Matter in Styles, was published in 1920. It starred a retired Belgian police officer with the unmistakable French accent Hercule Poirot. She envisioned it as the exact opposite of the ideal of the great 19th-century detective - only 162 centimeters tall and immaculately dressed in striped trousers, a jacket and vest, wearing black patent leather shoes, with a top hat on his head and a walking stick in his hand. Poirot later appeared in more than 30 novels and more than 50 short stories.

In the 1930 novel The Murder in the Parish, she introduced her second recognizable character - the equally insightful murderer Miss Marple, whose motto was: "Young people think old people are crazy, but old people know they are crazy young . "

Upon the news that her husband was cheating on her, she suffered a panic attack and disappeared for eleven days

In her twenties she married Colonel Archibald Christio, and in the marriage a daughter was born to them. In 1926, after the death of her mother and the news that her husband was cheating on her, she had a panic attack and disappeared for eleven days. Due to amnesia, she did not remember the details of the disappearance. In 1928, the couple divorced, according to the author's biography on Emka.si.

In 1930, Aghata then married archaeologist Max Mallowan, 14 years her junior. The marriage was happy, although Mallowan later cheated on her as well. The writer’s travels with another husband, however, have contributed to a number of novels set in the Middle East. For example, she wrote the murder on the Orient Express in 1934 in a hotel in Istanbul.

During World War II, she wrote two novels that were intended as the last examples of her great detectives. Both books were locked in a bank safe for more than 30 years and published only after her death.

She has written more than 60 detective stories and published 14 collections of short stories

In total, Agatha Christie has written more than 60 detective stories and published 14 collections of short stories. Among her high-profile works is also the drama The Mousetrap, which was christened in 1952 and is still on regular theaters around the world. Less well known is that she wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she received a British order called Dame Commander.

The author once traveled to Bohinj, which she visited with Mallowan in the summer of 1967. Her answer to the question of whether Bohinj would be the scene of one of her crime stories was: "Bohinj is too beautiful for murder". The writer was staying in room 204 of the Bellevue Hotel, which is still furnished as it was at the time of her visit.

Five years ago, on the 125th anniversary of the birth of the popular writer, her readers around the world also chose the best book they thought she had written. They chose a crime novel And then there was no one left.

Agatha Christie died of natural causes on January 12, 1976, aged 85 years.

Who is the real Poirot?

Researchers have discovered the identity of the Belgian police officer who most likely inspired the famous character Poirot in Agatha Christie’s novels.

Hercule Poirot marked 33 novels by Agatha Christie and 70 episodes of the television series. She first appeared in the novel The Mysterious Matter in Styles in 1920, and although the writer never named a specific person to inspire her, amateur researchers believe it could be Jacques Hornais, a police officer from Belgium.

Hornais left Belgium in 1914 when German troops entered it, and made his way to England, as did Poirot. His name and the name of his 17-year-old son Luciano are recorded in the diary of Alice Graham Clapp, who helped about 500 Belgians find new homes during the war. Hornais and his son were housed in the house of Mrs. Potts-Chatto in Torquay, the birthplace of Agatha Christie.

Alice Graham Clapp organized charity events for Belgian immigrants during the war, and on January 6, 1915, Agatha Christie, then 24, played the piano at one of them. The writer later said she found inspiration for Poirot in Torquay, and grandson Alice Clapp, after studying the diaries of her ancestors, is convinced that this happened right at the charity event.

Hornais' story and age match the details of Poirot, but unfortunately little is known about Hornais, nor is it known whether he also had characteristic black mustaches, which later became an indispensable part of Poirot, played by David Suchet in the series. . Agatha Christie was apparently inspired by Belgian war emigrants, but like the character herself in her novels, Hornais is also a mysterious person.

Agatha Christie's best novel?

Readers who enjoy Agatha Christie’s masterful crime plots don’t run out of material for long. The queen of crime fiction has written more than 80 novels with them, among which the book And Then There Were None was chosen as the best on the occasion of this year's anniversary of the author's birth.

The best story in the work of the writer, created by the shrewd detective minds of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, was chosen to mark the 125th anniversary of the birth of the British writer. More than 15,000 readers took part in the survey, of which 3,200 were chosen as the best And then there was no one else. The work, written by Agatha Christie in 1939, is also considered one of her greatest masterpieces, and the author admitted that writing this crime novel was the most difficult of all.One of the best selling books of all time

With more than 100 million copies sold, the story became the best-selling novel of the author's oeuvre. It is also the best-selling crime novel in the world and one of the best-selling books of all time. The rest of Agatha Christie's works still go for honey today. Her works have sold about two billion copies, giving her the position of best-selling writer of all time in the Guinness Book of World Records. She is also considered to be the most translated author of all time, as her works can be read in more than a hundred languages.

The selection of the best book is just one of many projects and events that the writer is preparing in her memory, mainly in the UK, but also elsewhere in the world.

The life of Agatha Christie in the facts

-As often happens with talented people, Agatha suffered from dysgraphia - the inability to write text. Her works dictated.

The reason for writing Agatha Christie’s first novel became an argument with her sister, who was a writer. The controversy is that something more worthwhile can be done than a sister.

-Initially, Agatha Mary Clarissa Mallowan, nee Miller, was to publish under the pseudonym Martin West and Martin Gray in the belief that the female name of the detective author could make some readers prejudice, he later decided to leave the real name and the name of her first husband - Christie.

-During World War I, Agatha Christie worked as a nurse in a military hospital and then went to work in a pharmacy so she became well versed in toxic substances. Perhaps because it is poison, poisoning is so common in their detectives.

-1926 became one of the most difficult in Christie's life, and then there was her mysterious disappearance. Her mother died, my brother became a complete addict, publishers did not like the novel "The Murder Roger Ackroyd", in which the story she wears on the face of the killer, and on top of all her husband Archibald fell in love with another woman and demanded a divorce . After it was that Agatha left, his sought out, and even hired the help of another British master detective - Arthur Conan Doyle. After a while, Agatha is found in a small town sanatorium, where it turns out all like Teresa Neal. suffered greatly in memory: she had a vague memory of her husband, could not remember her daughter's name, and his sister learned only a few days.

Some believed that the author specifically responded to the situation with his “disappearance” to avenge his husband.

-Brian Aldiss acquainted Agatha Christie once said of his methods: "She was concluding the book to the last chapter, and then chose the most likely of the suspects, and going back to the beginning, reworked a few points to frame it."

According to Christie, from childhood to old age she dreamed the same dream: a man with severed arms and a terrible person. She calls him a man-killer, even though he didn’t kill anyone in his sleep.

- During World War II, Agatha Christie wrote two stories - “The Curtain” (curtains) and “Sleeping Murder” (Sleeping Murder), which were to be the last book about Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, two of his most popular characters. At the request of both Agatha Christie the books were hidden in a bank vault and had to come out into the light when Agatha Christie would not be able to write.

The stories were published in 1974, when the writer was 84 years old ...

-The film “Murder on the Orient Express” was the only film adaptation of the writer’s work that Agatha Christie was entirely pleased with. In particular, he said, Albert Finney’s business was the role of Hercule Poirot, the closest literary character he created. Agatha Christie traveled extensively, and the novel adopted as the basis for this film was written in Istanbul, where the writer came to stay with her husband.

-Agatha Christie was married twice, the first husband, gave birth to a daughter, Rosalind. The second time she married very late, and the husband was younger than her fifteen years. He was an archaeologist, and Agatha often joked that his wife, an archaeologist, must be much older than her husband to be interested in him.

-her published books have sold more than two billion copies and have been translated into 103 world languages. Agatha Christie has become a symbol of Great Britain, his masterpieces being best published after the Bible and Shakespeare.

Agatha Christie also set a record for the largest number of theatrical works, and her play "Mousetrap" (Mousetrap) was first staged in 1952 and is still constantly shown on stage in London.

-Agatha Christie is the author of many great sayings, the most famous of which was: "Freedom is worth fighting for."

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