The first part of the exhibition focuses on the years from her birth up to the First World War with text from the author's autobiography accompanying rare family photographs. In 1990, the Torquay Museum created the Agatha Christie Exhibition to celebrate the centenary of Torquay's most famous native. Her trusty old Remington typewriter sits there in a place of honour. Today the Torre Abbey in Torquay has a room in its tower dedicated to Agatha Christie, filled with memorabilia of her life. Subscribe here to receive British Heritage Travel's print magazine!Īlthough she travelled to such exotic locales, Christie's life was forever intertwined with her beloved Torquay and she often returned to its sites and buildings in her stories, sometimes under different names. She justified her refusal in her autobiography by stating that she was sure the investigators would not have enjoyed it at all: 'Hercule Poirot, the complete egoist, would not like being taught his business by an elderly spinster lady.' Miss Marple became a rival sleuth in Christie's fiction and Christie received many letters from fans requesting that Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple be featured together in a story. The lovable Miss Jane Marple first appeared in Murder at the Vicarage in 1930. Although amnesia was the official explanation given for her disappearance, the author herself never fully revealed the details of this enigmatic episode.Ĭhristie continued to write during this period. Nearly two weeks later, she turned up at a hotel in Harrogate in Yorkshire under an assumed name.
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Following these traumatic events, on 3rd December 1926, Christie mysteriously disappeared, abandoning her car by the edge of a pond.
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A few months later, after a dozen years of marriage, Archie asked Agatha for a divorce. Agatha Christie and divorceĪt about this time, Agatha's mother died following a short illness. In 1926 the publication of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd with its controversial and wholly unanticipated ending made Christie famous. In her autobiography, she wrote that the idea for Poirot's Belgian origins came from the fact that many Belgian refugees were in Torquay during the First World War. This story introduced the dapper, meticulous, diminutive Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, who would appear in many of her later works until his death in Curtain in 1975. After outright rejections from the first three and a long-delayed response from the fourth, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was finally published in 1921. A year later, she completed the manuscript and sent it off to four publishers. Here she gained the knowledge of medicines and poisons that she later used in her stories.Īgatha began her first detective story in 1915 following a challenge by her sister Madge. During the First World War, while Archie was off fighting on the Continent, Christie worked in the dispensary of a Red Cross hospital in Torquay.
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On Christmas Eve, 1914, she married Colonel Archibald Christie, a dashing young airman she had met two years before. As a child, young Agatha spent hours roller skating there.
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The long pier that dominates Torquay today was built the year Christie was born. Torquay was then, as now, a fashionable resort, often referred to as 'The English Riviera' because of its beautiful beaches, mild climate, and semi-tropical vegetation. The distance is about 225 miles.Īgatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born at Ashfield, a Victorian villa, in Torquay, on 15 September 1890, to a well-to-do American-born father and an English mother. Follow the M5 to Exeter, then take the A330. By car, take the M4 west from London to the M5 south near Bristol. To Torquayīritish Rail offers service to Torquay from London's Paddington Station. Once you have explored London's clues to the 'Queen of Crime', to uncover the rest of the story, head south-west towards beautiful South Devon, and her beloved seaside town of Torquay.