Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, was an English writer known for her sixty-six detective novels and fourteen short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world’s longest-running play The Mousetrap, performed in the West End from 1952 to 2020, as well as six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott.
Winterbrook , an area on the southern edge of Wallingford, is best known as the place where Dame Agatha Christie lived for more than 40 years and did most of her writing. Christie, the crime novelist bought the Winterbrook House in 1934, with her Archaeologist husband Max Mallowan.
From 1971 to 1974, Christie’s health began to fail, although she continued to write her last novel, being Postern of Fate in 1973. Using experimental tools of textual analysis, Canadian researchers suggested that Christie may have begun to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia.
Christie died peacefully on 12 January 1976 at age 85 from natural causes at her home Winterbrook House, Winterbrook, Oxfordshire.
