Wooley is known as the "modern" archaeologist who excavated in a methodical way, keeping careful records, and using them to reconstruct ancient life and history. But he is also known for playing matchmaker to famous novelist Agatha Christie.
Christie came on a visit to the UR excavation at Wooley's invitation in 1927. Both he and his wife, Katherine, loved her books. She made such an impression on them that they invited her back in 1930.
He asked his assistant, Max Mallowan, to escort her around on that trip. A courtship ensued, and she married Mallowan, 15 years her junior, in September of 1930. They wed six months after meeting and went on to an adventurous life together.
Mallowan became an important archeologist in his own right and Agatha went with him on excavations. Her travels led her to write Murder in Mesopotamia and Death on the Nile.
Christie had this to say about Wooley in her memoir, Agatha Christie: An Autobiography:
"Leonard Woolley saw with the eye of imagination: the place was as real to him as it had been in 1500 BC, or a few thousand years earlier. Wherever he happened to be, he could make it come alive. While he was speaking I felt in my mind no doubt whatever that the house on the corner had been Abraham's. It was his reconstruction of the past and he believed in it, and anyone who listened to him believed in it also."
Wooley met his own spouse, Katharine Elizabeth Wooley, when she was a young, widowed field assistant at the archaeological excavations in Ur. Love grew beneath the Mesopotamian moon and they went on to work together on his digs.