Young Agatha Christie

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The 1950s was a busy decade for Agatha’s play-writing, and she struck up a fruitful new relationship with theatre producer Peter Saunders. Reggie, ever practical, insisted however that they wait for two years – and should anyone else richer come along in the meantime then Agatha was free to break off the engagement. The definitive study of Agatha Christie's stage plays is Curtain Up: Agatha Christie, a Life in Theatre by Julius Green. Their relationship was forged by travel – Max could “rough it” and so could Agatha; she was unperturbed when their vehicle became stuck in a desert wadi, which Max found most attractive!

In 1968, when Christie was almost 80, she sold a 51% stake in Agatha Christie Limited (and the works it owned) to Booker Books (better known as Booker Author's Division), which by 1977 had increased its stake to 64%. Because her siblings were so much older, and there were few children in their neighbourhood, Christie spent much of her time playing alone with her pets and imaginary companions.The Mousetrap has long since made theatrical history as the world's longest-running play, staging its 27,500th performance in September 2018. Her last public appearance was in November 1974 at the premiere of Sidney Lumet’s Murder on the Orient Express, which featured an all-star cast including Albert Finney as Poirot.

Meanwhile, Christie's social activities expanded, with country house parties, riding, hunting, dances, and roller skating.

Agatha broke off her engagement to Reggie, and married Archie on Christmas Eve 1914 after both had experienced the atrocities of the First World War – Archie in France and Agatha on the Home Front, working as a nurse with the Voluntary Aid Detachment in a Red Cross Hospital in Torquay. Family friend and author Eden Philpotts offered shrewd and constructive advice: “The artist is only the glass through which we see nature, and the clearer and more absolutely pure that glass, so much the more perfect picture we can see through it. In 1953 her adaptation of Witness for the Prosecution (from an earlier short story) debuted at Winter Gardens, and in 1954 she became the only playwright to have three productions running concurrently in the West End when Spider’s Webwas added to the mix. Fed up with what she saw as the unfair terms offered by The Bodley Head, she sought out an agent, Edmund Cork of Hughes Massie, and he found her a new publisher - William Collins and Sons (now HarperCollins).

In 1947, the Anti-Defamation League in the US sent an official letter of complaint to Christie's American publishers, Dodd, Mead and Company, regarding perceived antisemitism in her works. It is peopled with characters you have never seen before and in all probability will never see again. Following the publication of the 1975 novel Curtain, Poirot's obituary appeared on the front page of The New York Times. In late February 2014, media reports stated that the BBC had acquired exclusive TV rights to Christie's works in the UK (previously associated with ITV) and made plans with Acorn's co-operation to air new productions for the 125th anniversary of Christie's birth in 2015. Mathew Prichard also holds the copyright to some of his grandmother's later literary works including The Mousetrap.In 1940, Agatha’s daughter Rosalind married Hubert Prichard and gave birth to a son, Mathew, in 1943.

In 1905, her mother sent her to Paris, where she was educated in a series of pensionnats (boarding schools), focusing on voice training and piano playing.The 1944 publication focuses on the slow realisation of the main protagonist, after being stranded in the desert, that perhaps her carefully crafted life is not quite what it seems. I had the firm conviction that, if I went about looking for adventure, adventure would meet me halfway. Either I cling to everything that's safe and that I know, or else I develop more initiative, do things on my own.