Agatha Christie first husband: Meet Archibald Christie

Colonel Archibald Christie CMG DSO (30 September 1889 – 20 December 1962) was a British businessman and military officer. He was the first husband of mystery writer Dame Agatha Christie; they married in 1914 and divorced in 1928.

They separated in 1927 after a major rift due to his infidelity and obtained a divorce the following year. Christie was born in 1889 in Peshawar in The British Raj, now Pakistan. His father, also called Archibald Christie, was in the Indian Civil Service.

Archibald Christie’s mother was Ellen Ruth “Peg” Coates. Christie was sent to England to be educated and was a boarder at Hillside Boys School in Godalming for some years.

After he left school, he passed the entrance exam to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and, in 1909, was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Regiment of Artillery.

Christie met Agatha Miller when he was invited to a ball on 12 October 1912 by Lady Clifford at her grand home Ugbrooke House in Chudleigh. They were married on Christmas Eve of 1914.

Together they had one child, a daughter named Rosalind Margaret Clarissa Hicks (née Christie; 1919–2004). Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), introduced Hercule Poirot.