The Lady Magazine

11 September 2015

Dear Readers, So, we say Happy Birthday to the Women’s Institute, 100 years young on 16 September. From your 130-year-old elder sister, we salute you and all the things you have given us. From your campaign to Keep Britain Tidy to the time your members dressed up as bananas outside supermarkets and helped found the Fairtrade Foundation. For making more jam than anyone would ever think possible to raising the tea-tent roof at Glastonbury this summer. In celebration of this wonderful occasion, this week we are offering WI members a special subscription discount; because everyone needs to put their feet up with a good read sometimes. Unless you’re an Agatha Christie fan, in which case you’re probably perched on the edge of your seat trying to guess whodunnit. As her grandson Mathew Prichard tells us, on the eve of the 125th anniversary of Agatha’s birth, he could never guess who the killer was, but his mother always could. Many of these gory deeds were typed out on the writer’s old Remington Victor portable in her study at Greenway, her idyllic holiday home in Devon. Agatha would regularly retreat there to relax, and why not? Our Autumn Breaks special is full of enticing, poetic, peaceful places that she would have loved, I’m sure. Until next week, very best wishes, Sam Taylor, Editor