Agatha christie biography professional#
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They spent their honeymoon night in the Grand Hotel, Torquay and on the 27th December Archie returned to France. Agatha broke off her engagement to Reggie, and married Archie on Christmas Eve 1914 after both had experienced the atrocities of the First World War – Archie in France and Agatha on the Home Front, working as a nurse with the Voluntary Aid Detachment in a Red Cross Hospital in Torquay. According to her autobiography, it was the “excitement of the stranger” that attracted them both. Their courtship was a whirlwind affair both were desperate to marry but with no money. Here she was swept off her feet by the charming Archie Christie, a sub-altern and qualified aviator who had applied to join the Royal Flying Corps. In 1912, Agatha attended a party at Ugbrooke House, a stately home near Exeter in Devon.

Agatha christie biography free#

Reggie, ever practical, insisted however that they wait for two years – and should anyone else richer come along in the meantime then Agatha was free to break off the engagement. Most were rejected, but she warmly accepted the hand of her friend Reginald Lucy. Friends she made in Cairo invited her to house parties back home on her return and various marriage proposals followed. There were evening dresses and parties, and young Agatha showed more interest in these than the local archaeological sites. Marriage was the main goal for young women, and the girls were on the lookout for handsome men to flirt with. In 1910 they set off for Cairo and a three month debutante season at the Gezirah Palace Hotel. Never intrude yourself.” Some of these early stories were re-worked later and compiled into collections.Ĭlara’s health and the need for economies dictated their next move. Family friend and author Eden Philpotts offered shrewd and constructive advice: “The artist is only the glass through which we see nature, and the clearer and more absolutely pure that glass, so much the more perfect picture we can see through it.

Agatha christie biography professional#

She could even have been a professional pianist but for her excruciating shyness.Īt the age of 18 Agatha was already amusing herself writing short stories, which Clara had suggested she do to stave off boredom while in bed with influenza. There were more money worries and talk of selling Ashfield, but Clara and Agatha found a way forward.Īgatha attended a girls’ school in Torquay for a short while, but finding that unsuitable, Clara took her daughter to Paris where she spent time in a succession of boarding schools, taking piano and singing lessons and embracing the culture of the French capital. Clara was distraught and Agatha became her mother’s closest companion. Shortly after her eleventh birthday however, Agatha’s world was turned upside down by the sudden death of her father. It was here that Agatha learnt her idiomatic but erratically-spelt French, and the trip marked the start of her lifelong love of travel.Īgatha regularly visited her grandmothers - Granny B (Clara’s mother), and ‘Auntie-Grannie’ (Clara’s aunt/Frederick’s stepmother) - in the London suburb of Ealing, and wrote a poem about the new trams that arrived there in 1901 which was published with much pride in the local magazine. When Agatha was five the family’s investments in America were suffering and, in order to economise, they rented out Ashfield and spent some time in France. People not being who they seem went on to play a part in her later stories. When at home, Madge would often spend time with her little sister making up scenarios about frightening characters, and Agatha had a recurring nightmare about a terrifying ‘Gunman’. With her brother and sister away at school Agatha was used to amusing herself, inventing imaginary friends, playing with her animals and writing poems.

Where did Agatha’s creativity come from? Clara’s made-up tales certainly fuelled her vivid imagination, and she absorbed the children’s stories of the time including Edith Nesbit ( The Story of the Treasure Seekers, The Railway Children) and Louisa M Alcott ( Little Women) as well as poetry and thrillers from America. Clara, who was an excellent storyteller, did not want Agatha to learn to read until she was eight but Agatha, bored and as the only child at home, taught herself to read by the age of five. What made Agatha’s upbringing unusual, even for the time, was that she was home-schooled by Frederick in those early years.