Agatha Christie

A memorial for Agatha Christie.

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was a British writer. She wrote 66 detective novels and 14 short stories during her life. Her fictional characters, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, became well-known by a huge audience and many novels were based on these characters. Another famous book of her is And Then There Were None (originally named Ten Little Niggers), which is Christie's best selling novel. Also the Murder on the Orient Express is written by her. Her play The Mousetrap is the longest running play ever written.

Christie is, according to the World Guinness Book of Records, the best-selling author who ever lived. Her books are translated to 108 languages and UNESCO thinks there have been 3,2 billion copies sold. It is estimated that if all sold books would be loaded onto a train and this train would travel at full speed, it would take nine hours for the train to pass a certain point.

Christie had dyslexia. She didn't became very rich from all these books, because the largest part of the books were written in the Public Domain. She was also very generous. At one time she gave the proceeds of her book's sales to a local church for its restoration.

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