Best selling author of all time

Who is, according to the Guinness Book of Records the best selling author in the world after William Shakespeare? Who, according to UNESCO, is the most translated? (Okay, the next one is easy.) Whose is the longest run of any play in the world?

In all cases, the answer is Agatha Christie. I started reading Agatha Christie when I was 12 years old -- that's right, almost half a century ago --and I still look for one of her books if I have a few hours to spare when travelling, and I have left the book I am currently reading at home. It is not so much revisiting as looking for my favourite comfort read, my 'reading' teddy bear, so to speak. (Leslie Charteris is my other comfort read.)

Agatha Christie has sold over 2 billion books in 44 languages (move aside Rowling, don't even think about it), she still sells 5 million copies every year, and annual royalties are still coming in at GBP4 million. Her play, The Mousetrap, also according to the Guinness Book of World Records, has the longest theatrical run ever. It opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London on November 25, 1952. It moved next door to the St. Martin's Theatre on March 25, 1974, not missing a single performance. It continues to this day. The first edition of The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) sold 2000 copies. Curtain (1975) sold 150,000 copies in the first edition.

The latest story (in The Independent) is that Greenway, her Georgian mansion in Devon, has been restored by the National Trust and will be open to the public for the first time. The mansion which was in the hands of Christie's daughter Rosalind and her second husband Anthony Hicks, was handed over to the National Trust by Mathew Pritchard, Dame Agatha's grandson, after their deaths in 2004 and 2005.

The Independent