Katharine Woolley Mesopotamia" by Agatha Christie; Christie's second marriage in 1930 was to Max Mallowan, Sir Leonard Woolley's assistant at Ur. During World War II, her husband was involved with monitoring Nazi looting of museums, galleries and archives; she assisted with this work. She died of multiple sclerosis on 8 November 1945 in The Dorchester, where she and her husband had been living for several years. Katharine Woolley Katharine Woolley, née Menke (June 1888 – 8 November 1945) was a British archaeologist who worked principally at the Mesopotamian site of Ur. She was married to archaeologist Sir Charles Leonard Woolley. She was
Agatha Christie Baghdad on the Orient Express. Late in this trip, in 1930, she met a young archaeologist 13 years her junior, Max Mallowan, whom she married in September 1930. Their marriage was happy and lasted until Christie's death in 1976. In a 1977 interview, Mallowan recounted his first meeting with Christie, when he took her and a group of tourists on a tour of his expedition site in Iraq. Christie frequently used settings that were familiar to her for her stories. She often accompanied Mallowan on his archaeological expeditions, and her travels with him contributed background to several of her novels