THE SNOWMAN – RAYMOND BRIGGS

Unusual amongst the other works on this list in that this book doesn’t have any words, The Snowman was published in 1978 as an illustrated children’s book about a Snowman that comes to life.  The Snowman and the boy who built him then have a magical adventure through the countryside before the Snowman melts in the morning.  It was adapted into a cartoon and the song “Walking in the Air” from the special is constantly on stores’ Christmas playlists.

A STAR OVER BETHLEHEM – AGATHA CHRISTIE

While largely known for her mysteries and characters such as Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, Agatha Christie was also a very religious person.  Her religious beliefs come out largely in this collection of poems and short stories published as Agatha Christie Mallowan (her title, Lady Mallowan, earned from her second husband).   The short stories vary from a donkey that witnesses the birth of Jesus to a London widow who encounters Jesus on a water taxi and has a profound experience.  It’s certainly worth reading for a better understanding of her abilities as a writer.

LETTERS FROM FATHER CHRISTMAS – J.R.R. TOLKIEN

Another author essentially known for one genre is J.R.R. Tolkien.  Very different from his stories involving elves and hobbits, Letters from Father Christmas takes a page from his contemporary C.S. Lewis and imagines letters written from the supernatural spirit himself.  Tolkien actually wrote the letters for his children between 1920 and 1942 as if they were from Father Christmas (or his chief elf secretary) to add to the holiday magic for them by relating stories that happened to Father Christmas.  The letters were amongst Tolkien’s posthumous works and show not only the full range of his writing but also the lengths he would go to for his family.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARBUNCLE – ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Not really about Christmas, this Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle is the only one of the great detective’s cases that takes place during the holiday.  In the days following Christmas, Watson visits Holmes, and the two become embroiled in the search for a missing jewel.  After catching the villain in the story’s conclusion, Holmes indulges in the holiday spirit to grant mercy on the thief.  As with many Holmes stories, it’s been adapted multiple times and might even be shown on TV around the season.

DICKENS AT CHRISTMAS – CHARLES DICKENS

We couldn’t get through this list without including at least one Dickens work, and if you can find this edition in print or on an e-reader, Dickens at Christmas is the book you need.  Containing all five of his Christmas novels from A Christmas Carol to The Cricket on the Hearth, it also features several short stories (including “The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton” from The Pickwick Papers) that have helped to define the holiday for every generation since.  It really is the most comprehensive collection of Dickens Christmas stories around and totally worth your money whether you get it at a discount or pay full price.

source: anglotopia

Listen to the song in the video and fill in the gaps in the lyrics.

Walking In The Air                   

We’re walking in the air

We’re floating in the 1. …… sky

The people far below are sleeping as we 2. ……

I’m holding very 3. ……

I’m riding in the 4. …… blue

I’m finding I can fly so high above with you

Far across the 5. ……

The 6. …… go by like trees

The rivers and the hills

The forests and the 7. ……

Children gaze open mouth

Taken by 8. ……

Nobody down below believes their eyes

We’re surfing in the air

We’re swimming in the 9. ….. sky

We’re drifting over icy

10. …… floating by

Suddenly swooping low on an ocean deep

Arousing of a mighty 11. ……  from its sleep

We’re walking in the air

We’re floating in the midnight sky

And everyone who sees us 12. …… us as we fly

I’m holding very tight

I’m riding in the midnight blue

I’m finding I can fly so high above with you

Key:

1. moonlit

2. fly

3. tight

4. midnight

5. world

6. villages

7. streams

8. surprise

9. frozen

10. mountains

11. monster

12. greets

Agatha Christie always said that she had no ambition to be a writer although she made her debut in print at the age of eleven with a poem printed in a local London newspaper. 1. ________  .

By her late teens she had had several poems published in The Poetry Review and had written a number of short stories. 2. ________  .

Agatha Christie wrote about the world she knew and saw, drawing on the military gentlemen, lords and ladies, spinsters, widows and doctors of her family’s circle of friends and acquaintances. She was a natural observer and her descriptions of village politics, local rivalries and family jealousies are often painfully accurate. 3. ________ 

The most everyday events and casual observations could trigger the idea for a new plot. Her second book The Secret Adversary stemmed from a conversation overheard in a tea shop: “Two people were talking at a table nearby, discussing somebody called Jane Fish… That, I thought, would make a good beginning to a story — a name overheard at a tea shop — an unusual name, so that whoever heard it remembered it. A name like Jane Fish, or perhaps Jane Finn would be even better.”

And how were these ideas turned into novels? She made endless notes in dozens of notebooks, jotting down erratic ideas and potential plots and characters as they came to her “I usually have about half a dozen (notebooks) on hand and I used to make notes in them of ideas that struck me, or about some poison or drug, or a clever little bit of swindling that I had read about in the paper”.

She spent the majority of time with each book working out all the plot details and clues in her head or her notebooks before she actually started writing. Her son-in-law Anthony Hicks once said: 4. ________  

As grandson Mathew Prichard explains, “she then used to dictate her stories into a machine called a Dictaphone and then a secretary typed this up into a typescript, which my grandmother would correct by hand. I think that, before the war, before Dictaphones were invented, she probably used to write the stories out in longhand and then somebody used to type them. 5. ________  . I think a book used to take her, in the 1950s, just a couple of months to write and then a month to revise before it was sent off to the publishers. Once the whole process of writing the book had finished then sometimes she used to read the stories to us after dinner, one chapter or two chapters at a time. 6.________  . Of course, apart from my family, there were usually some other guests here and reactions were very different. Only my mother always knew who the murderer was, the rest of us were sometimes successful and sometimes not. My grandfather was usually asleep for most of the time that these stories were read but the rest of us were usually very attentive. It was a lovely family occasion and then a couple of months later we would see these stories in the bookshops.”

source: How Christie Wrote, agathachristie.com

A következő opciókat használva egészítsd ki a szöveget. A 6 kiegészítendő helyre 8 opciót találsz, így két extra opció van.

1. “You never saw her writing”, she never “shut herself away, like other writers do.”
2. She wasn’t very mechanical, she wrote in a very natural way and she wrote very quickly.
3. She was fond of reading on poisons and mysterious drugs.
4. Finding herself in bed with influenza, her mother suggested she write down the stories she was so fond of telling.
5. Although she got married twice, she praised the institution of marriage.
6. Mathew Prichard describes her as a “person who listened more than she talked, who saw more than she was seen.”
7. I think we were used as her guinea pigs at that stage; to find out what the reaction of the general public would be.
8. But it was her sister’s challenge to write a detective story that would later spark what would become her illustrious career.

keys/megoldások:
1. D.; 2. H.; 3. F.; 4. A.; 5. B.; 6. G.; extras: C. and E.

A következőkben 8 érdekes információt tudhatsz meg Hercule Poirot-ról.

1. Hercule Poirot first appeared in Agatha Christie’s first published novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which debuted in 1920. In her initial version Poirot explained all in a court room setting, but this was changed to a more familiar drawing-room discussion by the time it was published.
2. The first description of Poirot was by Hastings in The Mysterious Affair at Styles who said, “He was hardly more than five feet four inches but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side… The neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound.”
3. Poirot takes great pride in his appearance from his immaculately groomed moustache to his patent leather shoes. He uses a special preparation called ‘Revivit’ to conceal his grey hair.
4. Poirot’s obituary appeared on the front page of The New York Times in 1975, in advance of the publication of Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case – the first time a fictional character received this treatment.
5. In a rare filmed interview, Agatha Christie was asked which was the best Poirot novel. After some hesitation (“Oh dear that’s a tall order!”) she declared that it was probably Murder on the Orient Express.
6. In 2014, HarperCollins published the first authorised Poirot continuation novel, The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah, which reached the bestseller charts in 16 territories including the UK and US. This has since been followed by three further books, most recently The Killings at Kingfisher Hill in 2020.
7. Poirot stars in 33 novels and 59 short stories and 1 original full-length play by Agatha Christie, and 4 continuation novels by Sophie Hannah.
8. Poirot is very particular about what he drinks. He regularly consumes hot chocolate and tisanes, but he once called decaffeinated coffee an ‘abomination’.

source: https://www.agathachristie.com/characters/hercule-poirot/facts-about-hercule-poirot

A következő feladatban Poirot idézeteket olvashatsz, de az idézetek hiányosak.  A megadott 3 opcióból döntsétek el, melyik egészíti ki a legjobban az idézetet.

source: https://www.agathachristie.com/news/2018/eight-quotes-from-hercule-poirot

With over 2 billion copies of her books in print, British author Agatha Christie (1890-1976) has kept countless readers up into the early morning hours. Occasionally, the mystery surrounding her personal life—including a high-profile disappearance in the 1920s—has rivalled the best of her fiction. Let’s take a look at some of the verifiable details of the famed crime writer’s life and times.

1. AGATHA CHRISTIE’S FIRST NOVEL WAS WRITTEN ON A DARE.

After an adolescence spent reading books and writing stories, Christie’s sister Madge dared her sibling to attack a novel-length project. Christie accepted the challenge and wrote The Mysterious Affair at Styles, a mystery featuring a soldier on sick leave who finds himself embroiled in a poisoning at a friend’s estate. The novel, which featured Hercule Poirot, was rejected by six publishers before being printed in 1920.

2. AGATHA CHRISTIE BASED HERCULE POIROT ON A REAL PERSON.

The dapper Poirot, a mustachioed detective who took a gentleman’s approach to crime-solving, might be Christie’s best-known creation. Christie was said to have been inspired when she caught sight of a Belgian man deboarding a bus in the early 1910s. He was reportedly a bit odd-looking, with a curious style of facial hair and a quizzical expression. His fictional counterpart’s debut in The Mysterious Affair at Styles would be Poirot’s first of more than 40 appearances.

3. AGATHA CHRISTIE ONCE DISAPPEARED FOR 10 DAYS.

In 1926, Christie—who was already garnering a large and loyal fan base—left her home without a trace. It could have been the beginning of one of her sordid stories, particularly since her husband, Archie, had recently disclosed he had fallen in love with another woman and wanted a divorce. A police manhunt ensued, although it was unnecessary: Christie had simply driven out of town to a spa, possibly to get her mind off her tumultuous home life. The author made no mention of it in her later autobiography; some speculated it was a publicity stunt, while others believed the family’s claim that she had experienced some kind of amnesic event.

4. AGATHA CHRISTIE WASN’T BIG ON VIOLENCE IN HER WORK.

While a murder is typically needed to set a murder mystery in motion, Christie’s preferred methodology for slaying her characters was poison: She had worked in a dispensary during wartime and had an intimate knowledge of pharmaceuticals. Rarely did her protagonists carry a gun; her two most famous detectives, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, were virtual pacifists.

5. AGATHA CHRISTIE HAD AN ALIAS.

Not all of Christie’s work had a mortality rate. Beginning in 1930 and continuing through 1956, she wrote six romance novels under the pen name Mary Westmacott. The pseudonym was a construct of her middle name, Mary, with Westmacott being the surname of her relatives.

6. AGATHA CHRISTIE LOVED SURFING.

The image of Christie as a matronly author of mystery is the one most easily recognized by readers, but there was a time when Christie could be found catching waves. Along with her husband, Archie, Christie went on a traveling spree in 1922, starting in South Africa and winding up in Honolulu. At each step, the couple got progressively more capable riding surfboards; some historians believe they may have even been among the first British surfers to learn how to ride standing up.

7. AGATHA CHRISTIE TRIED HER BEST TO TAKE UP SMOKING.

While it would shortly gain a reputation for killing its devotees, smoking was once so revered that it seemed unusual not to take a puff. Shortly after the end of the first world war, Christie was quoted as saying she was disappointed, she couldn’t seem to adopt the habit even though she had been trying.

8. AGATHA CHRISTIE LOVED ARCHAEOLOGY.

After divorcing alleged cad Archie, Christie married archaeologist Max Mallowan in 1930 and joined him for regular expeditions to Syria and Iraq. In 2015, HarperCollins republished Come, Tell Me How You Live, the author’s long-forgotten 1946 memoir of her experiences traveling. Although she assisted her husband on digs, she never stopped working on her writing: Their preferred method of transport was frequently the Orient Express, a fact that likely inspired her Murder on the Orient Express.

9. AT LEAST ONE OF AGATHA CHRISTIE’S FICTIONAL “VICTIMS” WAS INSPIRED BY A REAL-LIFE NUISANCE.

When Mallowan married Christie, he was assistant to renowned archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley. This fact upset Woolley’s wife, who refused to let Christie stay in a Mesopotamia digging camp; Mallowan was forced to take a train into Baghdad every night to see her. Christie soon wrote Murder in Mesopotamia: The victim was the wife of an archaeology field director who was bludgeoned with an antique mace. Christie dedicated the book to the Woolleys, who never joined Mallowan on an expedition again.

10. THE NEW YORK TIMES RAN AN OBITUARY FOR HERCULE POIROT WHEN HE “DIED.”

Like Arthur Conan Doyle before her, Christie eventually grew tired of her trademark character and set about having Hercule Poirot perish in the 1975 novel Curtain. The reaction to his demise was so fierce that The New York Times published a front-page “obituary” for the character on August 6. Christie died the following year.

source: 15 Mysterious Facts About Agatha Christie by Jake Rossen, MentalFloss

The stamps come complete with hidden clues and references, printed in special inks and micro text, to murders and key scenes in the famous novels.

Each stamp sums up one of Christie’s complex plots in a single frame with clues that point to the murderer hidden in the artwork. These ‘hidden clues’ are revealed with exposure to UV light, body heat, and of course, the use of a magnifying glass.

Novels featured in the stamps – which will be available for a year  – include Murder on the Orient Express, The Body in the Library, And Then There Were None, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,  A Murder is Announced and The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which she wrote in 1916 but was published in 1920.

Clues and features include a figure, half-hidden and wielding a knife, letters, the names of the suspects and Poirot himself.

For example in Murder on The Orient Express there’s a red kimono character who distracts the viewer from the killer hidden behind a heat sensitive ink curtain. The curtain disappears when the stamp is touched, and names of suspects are written along the train track in micro text.

In The Mysterious Affair at Styles Poirot and Hastings investigate the crime scene – forming the skull, as the murderer used poison. The whole stamp is then reproduced in miniature on the poison bottle.

Each stamp also has a hidden letter, which combine across the set to spell ‘Agatha’. The presentation pack for the stamps is like a bookshelf packed with original objects, photographs, book covers and a timeline of the author’s life.

Designed by Jim Sutherland, the stamps were launched on the day of the best-selling British author’s birthday, September 15 2016.

Royal Mail also provided a special hand stamp on all mail posted in a post box in Christie’s town of birth, Torquay in Devon, for five days from September 15 to 19.

The British author, who died at the age of 85 on January 12 1976, is the best-selling novelist in history, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare, with over two billion copies of her books sold worldwide.

source: Sunday Post, creativereview.co.uk

Can you fill in the gaps in the biography of Agatha Christie with the words given? 

murders, successful, mystery, writer, buried, languages, sold, evidence

Agatha Christie, in full Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English ________(1) of crime stories. Her books are very famous all over the world, and she sold a lot of books. Her stories are about ________(2) and finding out who did them. The most well-known characters in her books are Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. Miss Marple is an old lady, and she talks to everyone. She uses logic to find out who is guilty of the murder. Hercule Poirot is a private detective from Belgium who lives in London. He likes to find out who did the murder by thinking about all the _______(3).

Christie was born in Torquay. She was married twice; she had a daughter called Rosalind Hicks. She worked in a hospital and in a pharmacy during World War I. She also wrote romance novels and plays. They were very _______(4) too. In 1971, she was honoured by the Queen with the title Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Christie died on 12 January 1976 at age 85 from natural causes at her Winterbrook House in the north of Cholsey parish, adjoining Wallingford in Oxfordshire (formerly part of Berkshire). She is _______ (5) in the nearby churchyard of St Mary’s, Cholsey.

The Guinness Book of World Records ranks Christie as the best-selling novelist ever. Her novels have _____ (6) about 4 billion copies. Her works are the world’s most-widely published books after those of William Shakespeare and the Bible. Her books have been translated into at least 103_________(7). Christie’s best-selling novel is And Then There Were None. It has sold 100 million copies. It is the world’s best-selling ______(8) novel.

Key: 

1, writer

2, murders

3, evidence

4, successful

5, buried

 6, sold

 7, languages

 8, mystery

In the drawing room of an English country house a little old lady sits knitting and discussing the dangers of prescription drugs. Upstairs, a blue poison bottle containing several lethal doses of strychnine is hidden in a drawer. Outside in the kitchen garden some unusual plants are growing among the herbs. On the hall table sits a bag full of pills left behind by the visiting nurse. In the kitchen what looks like sugar has been spilt on a tea tray, or are the small white crystals something else? At the front door a man in a pair of immaculate patent-leather shoes pauses to brush an invisible speck of dust from his lapel before ringing the bell. We are, in all likelihood, in Agatha Christie-land.

Christie, the Queen of Crime, is known the world over for her puzzling plots, fiendishly deceptive clues and, of course, her use of poisons. Her toxic tally tops 30 killer compounds, which she used in a staggering array of creative methods for murder. But what I find most impressive is how accurately she employed them. Few other novelists can claim to have been read by pathologists as reference material in real poisoning cases, as Christie was in the case of the St Alban’s poisoner, Graham Young. Her knowledge came from direct experience with poisons and a lifetime interest in the subject, though not in the criminal sense.

During World War I, Christie volunteered as a nurse in a hospital in Torquay but it was suggested she might enjoy working in the pharmacy. Then, and for many years afterwards, all prescriptions were prepared by hand. The work was skilled and carried a high degree of responsibility – it was essential to ensure the correct dosage was delivered. The role therefore required further training and Christie had to pass a number of exams before she could take on the work of dispenser or apothecary’s assistant. She set about studying both theoretical and practical aspects of chemistry. She also took tuition from a pharmacist working in a commercial pharmacy in the town, the sinister Mr P, a person who liked to carry around lumps of curare, or arrow poison, in his pocket to make him feel powerful. This rather disconcerting figure was resurrected nearly 50 years later in Christie’s novel The Pale Horse.

Back in the dispensary, after making a bet with her sister that she would write a detective novel, Christie considered the possibilities. Given her considerable knowledge of chemistry and as she was constantly surrounded by poison bottles, it is hardly surprising that she chose poison as her method of murder in what became The Mysterious Affair at Styles. After publication, Christie received her most cherished compliment when Styles was reviewed in the Pharmaceutical Journal. “This novel has the rare merit of being correctly written,” the reviewer stated.

Christie’s success grew, and knowing nothing about ballistics, she often used poisons in her plots. She maintained her interest in drugs throughout her writing life, and the scientific details of her chosen poisons were well researched. Christie built up a considerable medico-legal library over the years, with Martindale: The Extra Pharmacopoeia the most well-thumbed book in her collection. Her knowledge came from direct experience with poisons and a lifetime interest in the subject.

During World War II, she volunteered again as a dispenser at University College Hospital, London. After renewing her training, Christie put in regular hours at the dispensary. Her work at the hospital kept her up to date with new developments in drugs and pharmaceutical practice. At the same time she was inventing new stories and working out her devious plots.

At the start of her career, substances such as arsenic and strychnine were still in medical use – though they were being phased out as new drugs, among them barbiturates, were introduced at a rapid rate. Administering overdoses of prescribed drugs, as well as switching prescriptions, are common ploys on the part of Christie’s fictional poisoners, many of whom work in medicine.

But Christie also made use of many poisons that were not, and never have been, used as medicine – compounds such as cyanide and ricin. Cyanide was fairly readily available in the 1930s and 40s in the form of pesticides that could be bought over the counter. She also employed toxic plants such as yellow jasmine, foxgloves and hemlock, which grow easily and legally in gardens in the UK. The 1930s poisoner had to look no further than the medicine cabinet, garden shed or the garden itself to find a ready supply of dangerous compounds. No one can be beyond suspicion in a Christie story.

Anyone today thinking of using Christie as inspiration when plotting a murder, however, should know that they will find it considerably more difficult to obtain poisons. Methods of detecting them in a corpse, though well developed in Christie’s day, have also vastly improved, thanks to the work of dedicated pathologists and toxicologists. In short, you are very unlikely to get away with it.

I read Christie novels as a teenager and fell in love with their gentle humour. Even the many irritating habits of Hercule Poirot had their charm, though what I enjoyed most was trying to solve the murder/s (I seldom got it right). The scientific content of her work is so well incorporated into the storylines that it is easy to overlook – but it shouldn’t be.

source: The Guardian

She wrote 80 detective novels, six romances (under a pseudonym), 13 plays, and 154 short stories. All of her books are still in print, selling around 500,000 copies a year, and she’s the eighth most borrowed author from British libraries. With more than 2 billion of her books around the world, she is one of the most published authors in history outsold only by Shakespeare and the Bible. She holds three Guinness World Records, a wax figure commemorates her at Madame Tussaud’s, has a rose named after her, and every year England celebrates her birthday with a special Agatha Christie Week in September. Agatha Christie, The Queen of Crime or The Queen of Mystery was born 125 years ago.

Her life is as interesting as her writing career. She was born Agatha May Clarissa Miller in Devon, England in 1890, the youngest of three children in a conservative, well-to-do family. As a child she never attended school. She was home-schooled and started creating games to keep herself occupied at a very young age.

At the age of 24, she married Archie Christie, a World War I fighter pilot. That’s where her name comes from. During the war, she worked as a nurse. She came up with the idea of writing a detective novel while working in a hospital. The ”Mysterious Affair at Styles” gave the world Hercule Poirot, a retired Belgian police officer, a meticulous, tidy always neat and orderly little man with a waxed moustache.

Christie wrote more than 30 novels featuring Poirot. Among the most popular were “Murder on the Orient Express” (1934), and “Death on the Nile” (1937).

In 1926, her husband asked for a divorce because he had fallen in love with another woman.  What happened after that could have been an exciting scene from an Agatha Christie novel. On December 3, 1926, Agatha kissed her daughter goodnight, then promptly got in her car and left. Her abandoned vehicle was found a few miles away, but the writer herself had completely vanished. Lakes were dredged, 15,000 volunteers combed the area. All of England was involved in the case of the famous missing writer. She was found three weeks later in a small hotel registered under the name of her husband’s mistress explaining to police that she had lost her memory. Whether it was true or not nobody knew.

In 1930 she got married to Max Mallowan, a young archaeologist who she met on a trip to Mesopotamia. Her second marriage was a happy one. Christie loved to accompany her husband on digs and serve as his assistant, cleaning objects, matching shards of pottery, and helping to catalogue items. She once remarked to Mallowan that she wished she had taken up archaeology as a girl so she would have been more knowledgeable on the subject as an adult.

Another of Christie’s most well-known and beloved characters was introduced in “Murder at the Vicarage“ in 1930. Miss Jane Marple, an elderly spinster, solved all kinds of mysteries with intense concentration and intuition. Miss Marple lived her entire life in the fictional village of St. Mary’s Mead, a prototypical English village whose chief occupation was gossip. She never had any formal training as a detective and relied primarily on her keen intelligence, powers of observation, and knowledge of the human nature. She never married and was a sweet, frail-looking sort of person from a by-gone era. She did typical maiden auntie things, like knitting. The character was based, in part, on Agatha Christie’s step-grandmother and “some of my step-grandmother’s Ealing cronies – old ladies whom I have met in so many villages where I have gone to stay as a girl” – as she herself stated.

In ”They Do It With Mirrors”, one character accurately summed up Miss Marple’s ability to get to the bottom of some rather grisly crimes: “Because you’ve got a nose for that sort of thing. You always had. You’ve always been a sweet innocent looking creature, Jane, and all the time underneath nothing has ever surprised you, you always believe the worst.”

One of Agatha Christie’s Guinness World Records is connected to Miss Marple and her adventures. The Complete Miss Marple is the thickest book of the world. The massive volume is a collection of 12 novels and 20 short stories. It is 4032 page long, its spine is 322 mm and it weighs 8.02 kilograms. It is bound inmaroon leather with gilt writing on the cover. Reading at a pace of 30 pages an hour, it would take around 134 hours to finish the book. As for more numbers about the book: Miss Marple solves 43 murders: 12 poisonings, six strangulations, two drownings, two stabbings, two people pushed to their deaths, one rather grisly burning, one blow to the head, and one arrow through the heart. In all, 68 crimes are committed, including the murders. There are 11 philandering spouses, 21 romances, 22 false accusations, and a whopping 59 red herrings.  And, as solid evidence of either Miss Marple’s ability to keep a cool head in all this or the English obsession with tea, characters drink 143 cups of tea.  

One of the other two Guinness Records is for best-selling author, and another for her play, The Mousetrap, which is the world’s longest running play celebrating its 63rd year with over 25,000 performances. It opened in 1952 at the Ambassador Theatre and holds the record for the longest unbroken run in a London theatre.

Agatha Christie was a very productive writer. When asked about how she was able to create so many books, she once called herself “a sausage machine, a perfect sausage machine.” For many years she was on a tight schedule of two books per year, including one that was always released right before the holiday season, which was marketed as “Christie for Christmas.”

“People often ask me what made me take up writing … I found myself making up stories and acting the different parts. There’s nothing like boredom to make you write. So by the time I was 16 or 17, I’d written quite a number of short stories and one long, dreary novel. By the time I was 21, I finished the first book of mine ever to be published.” – she said.

As for the plots she liked to dream up ideas for them while soaking in her large Victorian bath, munching on apples. She even had a ledge installed over the tub to hold paper, pencils, and apples.  She stopped the habit when she became dissatisfied with the baths available to her. “Nowadays they don’t build baths like that. I’ve rather given up the practice.”

She liked doing extraordinary things. She and her first husband Archie were some of the first British people to ever try surfing. They first met surfing in Hawaii in 1922. “I learned to become expert, or at any rate expert from the European point of view – the moment of complete triumph on the day that I kept my balance and came right into shore standing upright on my board!” she wrote about surfing in her autobiography.

Agatha Christie spent most of her life in Devon, England. Her holiday home – called Greenways – inspired several of her novels. She was a keen gardener winning numerous blue ribbons in contests for her beautiful flower garden.

In 1971 Christie was made a dame. She died on January 12, 1976.

Several of her works were made into successful feature films, the most notable being ”Murder on the Orient Express” (1974) and ”Death on the Nile” (1978). Her work has been translated into more than a hundred languages. In short, she is the single most popular mystery writer of all time.