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Their courtship was a whirlwind affair both were desperate to marry but with no money.

It was in 1912 that Agatha met Archie Christie, a qualified aviator who had applied to join the Royal Flying Corps. The friends and young couples she met in Cairo invited her to house parties back home on her return. There were evening dresses and parties and young Agatha showed more interest in these than the local archaeological sites. In 1910 they set off for Cairo and a three month “season” at the Gezirah Palace Hotel. Never intrude yourself.”Ĭlara’s health and the need for economies dictated their next move. “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.

She could have been a professional pianist but for her excruciating shyness in front of those she did not know.īy the age of 18 she was amusing herself with writing short stories – some of which were published in much revised form in the 1930s - with family friend and author Eden Philpotts offering shrewd and constructive advice. But Clara and Agatha found a way forward and from the age of 15 Agatha boarded at a succession of pensions and took piano and singing lessons. There were more money worries and talk of selling Ashfield. Clara was distraught and Agatha became her mother’s closest companion. Her father, not well since the advent of financial difficulties, died after a series of heart attacks.

When she was five, the family spent some time in France having rented out the family home of Ashfield to economise, and it was here with her “governess” Marie, that Agatha learnt her idiomatic but erratically spelt French.

Agatha invented imaginary friends, played with her animals, attended dance classes and began writing poems when she was still a child. Where did her creativity come from? She absorbed the children’s stories of the time - Edith Nesbit (The Story of the Treasure Seekers, The Railway Children) and Louisa M Alcott (Little Women) but also poetry and startling thrillers from America.