The Queen of Crime grew up in Torquay. After her father's death she accompanied her mother on a trip to Egypt and shortly after her return she met her first husband, Archibald Christie. In 1914 they married in Bristol. Her husband was posted abroad and Agatha became a nurse in a surgical ward, tending the casualties sent back from the front. Then she transferred to the dispensary where she gained a rudimentary knowledge of poisons - a knowledge which she later used in her books. 
Their only child Rosalind was born in 1919. After 1922 the marriage started to break up and in 1926 the stress led to Agatha's disappearance for ten days. She never explained the full story of those ten days which culminated in her discovery in a Harrogate hotel. Two years later the couple divorced.
On a trip to Baghdad she met the archaeologist Max Mallowan. They married in 1932. The marriage was a great succes. They lived happily together for forty-six years until Agatha's death. She also wrote under the pseudonym 'Mary Westmacott'.
Who has not heard of Hercule Poirot with his "little grey cells" or of Miss Marple! See also Charles Osborne and Sophie Hannah.