Agatha Christie was born in 1890 and created the detective Hercule Poirot in her debut novel, *The Mysterious Affair at Styles* (1920). She gained wide popularity with *The Murder of Roger Ackroyd* (1926) and went on to produce a total of eighty novels and short-story collections over the course of six decades. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, a murder mystery titled "The Mousetrap", as well as six romances under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame for her contributions to literature.
Christie was born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Devon. She served in a Devon hospital during World War I. During the Second World War, she worked as a pharmacy assistant at University College Hospital in London during the Blitz, gaining a good knowledge of poisons that appeared in many of her novels.