Curtain Up - Agatha Christie: A Life in Theatre by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is revered around the world for her books and for the indelible characters she created. Less well-known today is her writing for the stage - an extraordinary repertoire of plays that firmly established her as the most successful female dramatist of all time. Now Julius Green raises the curtain on Agatha Christie's towering contribution to popular theatre, an element of her work previously disregarded by biographers and historians.

All in all, a real treat for everybody!
Mathew Prichard, Agatha Christie's grandson

More about this story

Starting with her childhood theatre-going experiences, the book uncovers Agatha's first serious attempts at play-writing, with scripts that reveal a very different style to the now familiar whodunits for which she became famous. In later life her work for the stage enjoyed enormous global success, but her record-breaking achievements in the West End and her conquest of Broadway came at a price: she had to fight against her own fame and felt obliged to delete Hercule Poirot from stories that had originally been created around him.

Julius Green's revelations about Agatha Christie's passion for the theatre are illustrated with copious extracts from hitherto unknown plays and unpublished private letters, many of which were discovered by him in archives on both sides of the Atlantic. The illuminating exchanges between Agatha, her agents and producers, include extensive correspondence with the legendary 'Mousetrap Man', theatrical impresario Sir Peter Saunders.

Meticulously researched and filled with ground-breaking discoveries, Curtain Up sheds new light on Agatha Christie's artistry and adds a fascinating layer to her remarkable story.