page_title: Archie Christie
section_title: Life with Agatha Christie
hierarchical_section_title: Archie Christie / Life with Agatha Christie
caption_attribution_description: English: Treasure Island feature at the British Empire Exhibition in 1925
context_page_description: Colonel Archibald Christie CMG DSO was a British businessman and military officer. He was the first husband of mystery writer Dame Agatha Christie. They wed in 1914 and divorced in 1928. During that period Agatha wrote some of her most renowned detective novels. They separated in 1927 after a major rift due to his infidelity and obtained a divorce the following year. Shortly after this Christie married Nancy Neele, and the couple lived quietly for the rest of their lives. Christie became a successful businessman and was invited to be on the boards of several major companies.
context_section_description: After the war, Christie and Agatha took a flat in Northwick Terrace in London for a short time. Their only child, their daughter Rosalind, was born in Agatha's childhood home, Ashfield, in Torquay in 1919. Soon after this, they found a larger flat in Addison Mansions, London.
  Christie left the military and took a job in the Imperial and Foreign Corporation. He remained there until 1922 when he was offered a position by Major Ernest Belcher as financial adviser in the British Empire Exhibition Tour. The purpose of the Tour was to promote the forthcoming British Empire Exhibition, which was to be held at Wembley in 1924 and 1925. The Tour departed in January 1922 and returned ten months later. During that time, Christie and Agatha visited many places around the world and came to know Major Ernest Belcher, who led the Tour and subsequently organised many parts of the Wembley Exhibition.
  After they returned from the tour, Christie found a job in the city and later moved to Austral Development, which established him in the world of finance. He started to play golf and was elected to the Sunningdale Golf Club. He spent many of his weekends there while Agatha worked on her novels in their London flat. Christie wanted to live in Sunningdale so, in 1924, they moved to a flat called Scotswood, where they lived for two years.
  At the beginning of 1925, Agatha was invited to participate in a committee to design and organise a children's section of the 1925 British Empire Exhibition in Wembley. Another friend of Belcher's, Nancy Neele, was also invited to be a member of the Committee; Neele would later become Christie's mistress and second wife. The committee on which both Agatha and Nancy sat designed and organised the Children's Paradise section of the Wembley Exhibition which contained Treasure Island as its centrepiece. It was a substantial contribution to the event as The Times outlined its features in depth and gave the names of the committee. It was a very successful part of the Exhibition as, in the following year, the Treasure Island feature was exported to the United States, where it was lauded as "the greatest amusement feature at the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania".
  At the beginning of 1926, Christie and Agatha jointly bought a large house in Sunningdale they called "Styles". In April of that year, Agatha's mother died, and, for several months, she moved back to her childhood home in Ashfield to sort and pack her mother's belongings. In August, Christie came to see her at Ashfield and told her he wanted a divorce as he had fallen in love with Neele. On 3 December 1926, Agatha disappeared from their home in Styles. A major police hunt was undertaken, and Christie was questioned by the police. She was discovered ten days later at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel (now the Old Swan Hotel) in Harrogate, Yorkshire, registered as Mrs Teresa Neele.
  Christie was asked to go to the hotel to identify his wife. She apparently did not recognise him until later, when she was recovering at her sister's house, Abney Hall. Christie issued a statement to the press saying that his wife was suffering from a nervous disorder and that she had complete loss of memory. The 1979 dramatic film Agatha was based on this event with Agatha and Archie portrayed by Vanessa Redgrave and Timothy Dalton. After this, the couple separated. Agatha went to live in a flat in London, and Christie remained at Styles so that he could sell it. In 1928, Christie married Nancy Neele in St George's, Hanover Square, with just a few close friends present at the ceremony.
caption: The Treasure Island Exhibit that was organised by Agatha Christie and Nancy Neele
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2014:04:28 21:27:18", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7245", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1500", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "953"}