The ‘Queen of Crime’, Agatha Christie, makes a comeback to The Grand in 2022 with the staging of her most popular and best-selling thriller The Mousetrap from Monday 19th June to Sat 24th June.

To mark the occasion we have put together a timeline of events marketing out The Mistress of Mystery, Agatha Christies’s life

• 1890 On 15 September American Frederick Miller and his English wife Clarissa welcome the last of their three children, Agatha Mary Clarissa.
• 1901/2 Agatha publishes her first piece of writing, a poem about electric trams, which appears in an Ealing newspaper.
• 1906 At 16, after being educated at home, Agatha is sent to a French finishing school in Paris, followed by three months in Egypt with her mother.
• 1912 Agatha becomes engaged to Major Reggie Lucy. However, she meets and falls in love with Lieutenant Archibald Christie.
• 1914 Agatha marries Archie Christie on Christmas Eve. While he serves in the First World War in the Royal Flying Corps, Agatha works at the Torbay Hospital.
• 1915 In response to a challenge from her sister, Agatha writes her first novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, although it is not published until 1920.
• 1919 Agatha gives birth to her only child, a daughter, Rosalind Margaret Clarissa.
• 1920 The publication of The Mysterious Affair at Styles introduces the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Agatha describes him as “hardly more than five feet, four inches, but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. The neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound.” Poirot goes on to appear in 33 novels and 53 short stories.
• 1924 Agatha publishes a slim volume of poetry, The Road of Dreams.
• 1926 Archie announces he has fallen in love with a mutual acquaintance. Shortly after the publication of the book that was to make her famous, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha disappears, triggering a nationwide hunt. She is eventually discovered at a hotel in Harrogate and doctors later diagnose a temporary loss of memory.
• 1928 Agatha’s first association with the theatre occurs when Michael Morton dramatises what has quickly become one of her most popular books, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, giving it a new title, Alibi. Hercule Poirot is first played on stage by a young Charles Laughton, although Agatha is not convinced by this casting…
• 1930 Agatha meets archaeologist Max Mallowan on a dig in Iraq. She writes her first romantic novel under a pseudonym. She also writes Murder at the Vicarage, her first story with Miss Jane Marple as the sleuth, who goes on to appear in 12 novels and 20 short stories. Agatha’s first original stage play, Black Coffee, which appeared at The Grand in 2014, is produced in London.
• 1931 Popular British actor Austin Trevor appears as Poirot in the film versions of Alibi and Black Coffee.
• 1943 And Then There Were None is Agatha’s first adaptation of one of her own books for the stage.
• 1945 And Then There Were None is the first Christie film to be produced in Hollywood.
• 1950 Agatha is created a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
• 1952 First night of the play The Mousetrap, originally a short story entitled Three Blind Mice, a prose version of a 1947 radio play. The short story has never been published in Britain so as not to give away the play’s ending!
• 1954 Agatha has the distinction of having three plays running simultaneously in London’s West End: The Mousetrap, Witness for the Prosecution, which becomes the first crime play to win an award in New York as Best Foreign Play – and Spider’s Web. Although she considered Witness for the Prosecution her most successful work, it is The Mousetrap that is still running in London’s West End.
• 1956 Agatha is created a CBE. This year sees the first – and only – a collaboration with another writer (Gerald Verner) on an adaptation of her 1944 novel Towards Zero.
• 1959 A UNESCO report says that Agatha’s works have been translated into over a hundred languages and over 400 million copies sold worldwide.
• 1969 Agatha writes the last Poirot in Hallowe’en Party, although Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case is not published until 1975.
• 1971 Agatha is created Dame Commander of the British Empire. 1972 Agatha’s final stage play, Fiddlers Three. 1974 Agatha makes her last public appearance.
• 1976 12 January: Agatha Christie dies at the age of 85.

Don’t miss Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap at Blackpool Grand Theatre! You can book your tickets here! 
Dont Just see it, Solve it. #whodunnit