After the war he became Professor of Western Asiatic Archaeology at London University and as Director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq he excavated at Nineveh and Nimrud 1947–61. He was assisting Leonard Woolley at Ur when he met Agatha who was visiting the site. In 1930 she married the archaeologist Max Mallowan who was fourteen years her junior. Murder at the Vicarage in 1930 saw the creation of Miss Marple. Meanwhile in 1920 she had written her first detective story The Mysterious Affair at Styles, introducing Hercule Poirot to the world. In 1914 she married the dashing Archibald Christie and Rosalind, her only child, was born in 1919. Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born at Torquay in 1890, the daughter of Clara Boehmer and Frederick Alvah Miller, a wealthy American.
