Christie provides a foreword and an epilogue to the book in which she very clearly states the beginning and end of the composition. The book was supposedly started on April 2, 1950 at the expedition house at Nimrud where she was working on the excavation of that ancient city with her second husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan. The narrative was then completed on October 11, 1965 at one of the Mallowan’s homes, Winterbrook House in Wallingford, Berkshire where Christie’s death occurred eleven years later. Collins included a preface to the book in which they admitted that repetitions and inconsistencies had been “tidied up”but they continued to impress on readers that the text had been composed over a fifteen-year period and was then left untouched by Christie for the remainder of her li