Biographies of great people

[Т А Кузнецова]

Biographies of great people

www.biography.com

www.notablebiographies.com

Here is an example of biography of a famous detective writer Agatha Christie

 

1. Agatha Christie was abducted by aliens?

Far-fetched? Perhaps. Suffice to say that on December 3, 1926, Christie’s husband Archie confronted Christie with the revelation that he’d been having an affair with a joint acquaintance. He then scarpered off to spend the weekend with her. Christie, already upset by the recent death of her mother, was traumatized still further. That evening she disappeared, leaving her car abandoned near the spookily named Silent Pool in Surrey. Police from four counties were drafted in to look for her and the Daily News offered £100 (£5,500 or around $7,700 in today’s money) for information. Eleven days later, the Evening Standard revealed she was staying at the Hydro Hotel in Harrogate under the alias ‘Mrs Theresa Neele’. (Bizarrely, Nancy Neele was the name of Archie’s mistress.) Doctors diagnosed amnesia, and she never publically spoke about the ‘missing 11 days’. Critics claimed it was a publicity stunt, but current thinking is she experienced the psychiatric disorder known as ‘dissociative fugue’ brought on by sudden huge stress.

2. She’s slightly less popular than God.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Agatha Christie’s popularity is only bettered by the Bible and the Bard. She is indisputably the best-selling novelist of all time. A 1959 UNESCO report claimed her books had been translated into 103 language, and to date she’s sold over two billion copies—more than the entire population of China and America combined.

3. She invented the Kindle. . .

Wouldn’t that be great? Sadly, we can only say that she is one of the best reasons to own a Kindle. Her entire output consists of 72 novels and innumerable short story collections, as well as poetry, memoirs, children’s stories and plays. In 2009, HarperCollins published all her Miss Marple stories in one volume: it had 4,032 pages, weighed over 8kg and cost an eye-watering £1,000 (around $1,500 U.S. dollars). The thickest book in the world, according to the Guinness Book of Records (them again), thankfully it also came with a carrying handle.