Sir Allen Lane - a Flair for Success is an obituary written by Agatha Christie for Sir Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books who died on 7 Jul 1970. The article was published in The Spectator on 18 Jul 1970.
Agatha Christie developed a personal friendship with Allen Lane when he first joined his uncle John Lane's publishing firm the Bodley Head. She had come to discuss a complaint she had about an unsuitable book jacket for Murder on the Links. Christie's first impression of Allen Lane was that of a vigourous youth ... "someone very much alive, stretching out towards life and exhibiting a gaiety and friendliness that was almost immediately endearing." They became friends and over the years she met his brothers and also became a regular visitor to his family home.
Reflecting on Sir Allen's success in business, Christie felt that his project (Penguin Books) he certainly had courage, a willingness to take risks and imagination. He was not one to "play safe". The art of publishing enthralled him. He saw "the great richness that can be bestowed through the written word." But Sir Allen's venture had, above all, "the amateur touch--a group of friends, of young men happy and working together and (important, this) enjoying themselves.
Here Christie recalls a rare aspect of her own life when she helped the Nairn Brothers (Gerald and Norman Nairn) with their venture, the "Cross Desert 6 Wheeler bus service from Damascus to Baghdad". Christie recalls how she and other friends of theirs would help pack lunch boxes for the Nairns for the next day's journey. Christie had obviously taken this service before as she recalls the thrill of setting out from Damascus,the stopover at the fort of Rutbah and so on. These experiences would later be captured in the short story The Gate of Baghdad.
Sir Allen's venture was like that of the Nairns, hazardous, without solid backing but it worked.
Beyond publishing, Christie also praises Sir Allen as a devoted family man with great kindness and compassion, and one for whom enjoyment of life was characteristic, and finally when he became ill in later life, he accepted his fate bravely. "A brave man and I think for most of his life a happy one."