Ninety-eight years ago this month,crime novelist Agatha Christie and her
husband, Colonel Archibald Christie
quarrelled at their home, Styles, in
Sunningdale, Berkshire.
Archie then left to see his mistress,
Nancy Neele, at Godalming. Later that
same evening, Agatha informed her
secretary in a letter that she had left for Yorkshire, and she subsequently dis-
appeared - her car was found aban-
doned at Silent Pool, near Guildford.
Despite the ensuing public outcry and
a massive manhunt, the writer was only identified on Tuesday December 14th, as
a guest at Harrogate's Swan Hydropathic
Hotel, 230 miles away.
She had registered as Mrs. Teresa Neele,
and she never spoke of her disappearance
ever again. Agatha was then diagnosed
with fugue/amnesia, but many contem-
porary commentators believed she had staged a publicity stunt, and those
missing eleven days remain a mystery worthy of one of her books. The
author's disappearance was dramatised in the 1979 film, Agatha - Vanessa
Redgrave and Timothy Dalton depicted the Christies, and in the Doctor Who
story, The Unicorn and the Wasp (2008), Fenella Woolgar portrayed the
Queen of Crime. In the TV drama, A Life in Pictures (2004) Agatha's
psychiatrist concluded that her fugue state was genuine - an opinion
reinforced by Lucy Worsley in Destination Unknown (2022).
The Christies divorced in 1928, and Agatha married the archaeologist
Max Mallowan two years later.
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