Agatha christie

On all those comic lists of the world’s shortest books (Great Italian War Heroes, My Hunt for the Real Killers, by O.J. Simpson etc.), the best title I ever came across was Bloomsbury: the Untold Story. Now, though, BBC2’s new drama, Life in Squares, is giving us yet another chance to marvel at how many sexual permutations one small group of people can achieve. But before all that began, Monday’s first episode was at some pains to show us the forces of Victorian stuffiness against which the Bloomsbury group rebelled. In the first scene, a suitor tried to woo Vanessa Stephen with the chat-up line, ‘Only two more days, Miss

Stars, playwrights and even set designers are constantly being lionised in the papers. But why not producers? They, after all, are the ones who choose the plays, the stars, and then make it all happen. Duncan Weldon and Paul Elliott are two veteran cigar chompers who’ve been in the business for 45 years. They’ve made and lost a packet, over and over again. They never seem to learn. Like all producers, they love their wives almost as much as they love a hit. Over lunch in the West End, I discussed the knack of being and staying a producer. Great exponents such as Cameron Mackintosh and Bill Kenwright have always

With all the enormous fuss over Sherlock on the telly, David Suchet’s recent retirement from Poirot should not be forgotten. What an incredible innings! The actor finally hung up his patent-leather shoes after a quarter-century of playing the sleuth in 70 stories. The case is not closed for fans, however. Agatha Christie’s Belgian brainbox — to whom a speck of dirt on a cuff is more agonising than a bullet wound — has already returned. He is on stage in the form of Robert Powell, famous for once playing Jesus of Nazareth. The play is Black Coffee, Christie’s first play and the only one with Hercule Poirot in it. Poirot,