Lucy: Mm, I love this picture of the young Agatha.

James Pritchard: She was an incredibly precocious child.

She never went to school because her mother didn't think she should learn to read-- or shouldn't learn to read before she was eight, but she taught herself age five.

Lucy: Do you think, James, the fact that she didn't really go to school meant that she had a particularly vivid fantasy life?

Well, she sort of grew up almost as an only child.

And so, yes, she had a lot of time on her own playing games, imagining things, making things up.

And I think that it has to have had an impact.

Lucy: Who are we looking at here James?

So that is Agatha on the back of her sister Madge.

Madge wrote books, she wrote plays.

This is Monty, who was her brother.

He lived a, I think you might call colourful life.

Mm.

He's acting pretty colourfully there.

What is he doing?

He's riding in a cart pulled by a goat.

James Pritchard: There's so much in that about perhaps her family in that I don't think it was a perfectly orthodox family.

I think they were all creative, and I think it was a very imaginative world, such that you would have your cart pulled by goats.

Lucy: And a hobby horse.

This seems like the perfect melting pot for somebody who's going to be a creative writer.

And you can see from these images that it was a very happy time.

The only problem with that, James, is how does the rest of life match up to it?

Well, it doesn't.