British Empire Exhibition

The British Empire Exhibition was a colonial exhibition held at Wembley Park, Wembley, England from 23 April 1924 to 31 October 1925.

The British Empire Exhibition would run from 1924 to 1925 and made Wembley a household name. In 1919 the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) had become the President of the organising committee for the proposed Exhibition at Wembley Park, north-west London, although the closing ceremony was presided over by his brother, the future George VI. The Prince, at the time, also wished for the Exhibition to boast "a great national sports ground", and so exercised some influence on the creation of Wembley Stadium at Wembley Park in 1923.

A world tour headed by Major Ernest Belcher in 1922 that lasted 10 months was mounted to promote participation in the Exhibition, with Agatha Christie and her husband among the participants.

The British Empire Exhibition Tour
In 1921 Belcher became Assistant general manager of the British Empire Exhibition which was to be held in 1924 and 1925. He invited Archie and Agatha Christie to join him on a tour of the Empire counties to promote the forthcoming exhibition. Christie outlined the tour in her autobiography and letters. She describes Belcher as an insufferable man who was prone to temper tantrums. A good description of him is given in a book.


 * "Belcher's presence dominated the tour, to an extent that Agatha could not have imagined, that she found insufferable at the time and comical in retrospect. He was a very modern type, for all his old-school-tie manner. He would have thrived on quangos or talking impressive-sounding nonsense on television; he was one of nature's politicians, although not from any sense of public duty: again, his sense of duty was directed towards his own advancement." (Thompson, Laura (28 March 2013). Agatha Christie)

Christie also felt that it was difficult to know whether to believe his stories or not. In her autobiography she said:


 * “He was a man with terrific powers of bluff. He had, according to his own story, bluffed himself into the position of Controller of Potatoes during the war. How much of Belcher’s stories was invented and how much true, we never knew.” (Christie, Agatha (14 October 2010). An Autobiography)

Christie’s assessment of Belcher seems to have been supported by an incident that happened in 1915, seven years before the tour when Belcher was invited as part of a group to visit former United States President Theodore Roosevelt at his home for a very short informal social gathering. Belcher wrote up the event as if Roosevelt had given him an exclusive interview on foreign policy and gave it to the London Morning Post and several other newspapers. The article was a complete fabrication of what Roosevelt had said and was so bad that the former President issued a statement to the New York Times rebutting the whole event.