Editing Agatha Christie (section)

== Interests and influences ==
=== Pharmacology ===

During the First World War, Christie took a break from nursing to train for the Apothecaries Hall Examination.<ref name=":11"/>{{Rp|xi}} While she subsequently found dispensing in the hospital pharmacy monotonous, and thus less enjoyable than nursing, her new knowledge provided her with a background in potentially toxic drugs. Early in the Second World War, she brought her skills up to date at Torquay Hospital.<ref name="Auto1993"/>{{Rp|235, 470}}

As Michael C. Gerald puts it, her "activities as a hospital dispenser during both World Wars not only supported the war effort but also provided her with an appreciation of drugs as therapeutic agents and poisons{{nbsp}}... These hospital experiences were also likely responsible for the prominent role physicians, nurses, and pharmacists play in her stories."<ref name=":11"/>{{Rp|viii}} There were to be many medical practitioners, pharmacists, and scientists, naïve or suspicious, in Christie's cast of characters; featuring in ''Murder in Mesopotamia'', ''Cards on the Table'', ''The Pale Horse'', and ''Mrs. McGinty's Dead'', among many others.<ref name=":11"/>

[[Gillian Gill]] notes that the murder method in Christie's first detective novel, ''The Mysterious Affair at Styles'', "comes right out of Agatha Christie's work in the hospital dispensary".<ref name=":10"/>{{Rp|34}} In an interview with journalist Marcelle Bernstein, Christie stated, "I don't like messy deaths{{nbsp}}... I'm more interested in peaceful people who die in their own beds and no one knows why."<ref>{{cite news |date=8 March 1970 |title=Agatha Christie: 'Queen of Crime' Is a Gentlewoman |page=60, quoted in Gerald (1993), p. 4 |work=[[Los Angeles Times]]}}</ref> With her expert knowledge, Christie had no need of poisons unknown to science, which were forbidden under [[Ronald Knox]]'s "Ten Rules for Detective Fiction".<ref name=":12"/>{{Rp|58}} [[Arsenic trioxide|Arsenic]], [[aconitine|aconite]], [[strychnine]], [[digoxin toxicity|digitalis]], [[nicotine]], [[thallium]], and other substances were used to dispatch victims in the ensuing decades.<ref name=":11"/>

=== Archaeology ===

{{quote box
| align  = right
| width  = 30%|
| source = Agatha Christie<ref name="Auto1993"/>{{rp|364}}
| quote  = The lure of the past came up to grab me. To see a dagger slowly appearing, with its gold glint, through the sand was romantic. The carefulness of lifting pots and objects from the soil filled me with a longing to be an archaeologist myself.
}}

In her youth, Christie showed little interest in antiquities.<ref name="thompson"/>{{Rp|68}} After her marriage to Mallowan in 1930, she accompanied him on annual expeditions, spending three to four months at a time in Syria and Iraq at excavation sites at Ur, [[Nineveh]], [[Tell Arpachiyah]], [[Chagar Bazar]], [[Tell Brak]], and [[Nimrud]].<ref name="thompson"/>{{Rp|301, 304, 313, 414}} The Mallowans also took side trips whilst travelling to and from expedition sites, visiting Italy, Greece, Egypt, Iran, and the Soviet Union, among other places.<ref name="Morgan1984"/>{{Rp|188–91, 199, 212}}<ref name="Auto1993"/>{{Rp|429–37}} Their experiences travelling and living abroad are reflected in novels such as ''Murder on the Orient Express'', ''Death on the Nile'', and ''Appointment with Death''.<ref name="thompson"/>{{Rp|514 (n. 6)}}<ref>{{cite web |title=Agatha Christie and Archaeology |url=https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/speccoll/2018/10/03/agatha-christie-and-archaeology/ |access-date=28 April 2020 |website=Special Collections. [[Newcastle University]] |date=3 October 2018 |archive-date=12 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200812201814/https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/speccoll/2018/10/03/agatha-christie-and-archaeology/ |url-status=live}}</ref>

For the 1931 digging season at Nineveh, Christie bought a writing table to continue her own work; in the early 1950s, she paid to add a small writing room to the team's house at Nimrud.<ref name="thompson"/>{{Rp|301}}<ref name=":16"/>{{Rp|244}} She also devoted time and effort each season in "making herself useful by photographing, cleaning, and recording finds; and restoring ceramics, which she especially enjoyed".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Lubelski |first=Amy |date=2002 |title=Museums: In the Field with Agatha Christie |url=http://www.archaeology.org/0203/reviews/christie.html |journal=[[Archaeology (magazine)|Archaeology]] |volume=55 |issue=2 |quote=Christie always accompanied Mallowan on his excavations, making herself useful by photographing, cleaning, and recording finds; and restoring ceramics, which she especially enjoyed. |access-date=29 March 2012 |archive-date=7 May 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120507083710/http://www.archaeology.org/0203/reviews/christie.html |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=":17"/>{{Rp|20–21}} She also provided funds for the expeditions.<ref name="thompson"/>{{Rp|414}}

Many of the settings for Christie's books were inspired by her archaeological fieldwork in the Middle East; this is reflected in the detail with which she describes them{{snd}}for instance, the [[temple of Abu Simbel]] as depicted in ''Death on the Nile''{{snd}}while the settings for ''They Came to Baghdad'' were places she and Mallowan had recently stayed.<ref name="Morgan1984"/>{{Rp|212, 283–84}} Similarly, she drew upon her knowledge of daily life on a dig throughout ''Murder in Mesopotamia''.<ref name=":8"/>{{Rp|269}} Archaeologists and experts in Middle Eastern cultures and artefacts featured in her works include Dr Eric Leidner in ''Murder in Mesopotamia'' and Signor Richetti in ''Death on the Nile''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Sova |first=Dawn B |title=Agatha Christie A to Z: The Essential Reference to Her Life & Writings |publisher=[[Infobase Publishing|Facts On File, Inc]] |year=1996 |isbn=0-8160-3018-9 |location=New York City}}</ref>{{Rp|187, 226–27}}

After the Second World War, Christie chronicled her time in Syria in ''Come, Tell Me How You Live'', which she described as "small beer{{snd}}a very little book, full of everyday doings and happenings".<ref name="mallowan2">{{cite book |last=Christie Mallowan |first=Agatha |title=[[Come, Tell Me How You Live]] |date=1990 |publisher=[[Fontana Books]] |isbn=0-00-637594-4 |location=London|orig-year=1946}}</ref>{{Rp|(Foreword)}} From 8{{nbsp}}November 2001 to March 2002, [[The British Museum]] presented a "colourful and episodic exhibition" called ''Agatha Christie and Archaeology: Mystery in Mesopotamia'' which illustrated how her activities as a writer and as the wife of an archaeologist intertwined.<ref>{{cite news |last=Glancey |first=Jonathan |date=17 November 2001 |title=Forbidden pleasures |work=[[The Guardian]] |url=https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2001/nov/17/iraq.culturaltrips |access-date=28 April 2020 |archive-date=8 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210308191240/https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2001/nov/17/iraq.culturaltrips |url-status=live}}</ref>