HC to publish Christie's Grand Tour

22.09.11 | Graeme Neill - The Bookseller

HarperCollins is publishing a collection of letters and photographs by Agatha Christie from a year-long trip she took around the world in a new book lined up for next year.
The publisher signed a worldwide deal with Christie's estate to release The Grand Tour in April 2012. The book will be edited and introduced by Christie's grandson, Mathew Prichard.
The book details the crime writer's 1922 round the world trip as part of a British trade mission. She left behind her two-year-old daughter with her sister but kept in touch with her mother in a series of weekly letters describing the places she visited and the people she met.
David Brawn, publisher of estates at HarperCollins, said: "This unique travelogue reveals a new side to Agatha Christie, demonstrating how her appetite for exotic plots and locations for her books began with this eye-opening trip, which took place just after only her second novel had been published. The letters are full of tales of seasickness and sunburn, motor trips and surf boarding, and encounters with welcoming locals and overbearing colonials.
"Fans will also relish the fact that the first leg of the tour to South Africa is very clearly the inspiration for the book she wrote immediately afterwards, The Man in the Brown Suit, as well as later books and stories."