James Agate

James Evershed Agate (9 September 1877 – 6 June 1947) was a British diarist and critic. In the period between the wars, he was one of Britain's most influential theatre critics. After working in his father's business until his late twenties he found his way into journalism, being on the staff of The Manchester Guardian (1907–14); drama critic for The Saturday Review (1921–23), and The Sunday Times (1923–47), and holding the same post for the BBC (1925–32).

Agate's diaries and letters, published in a series of nine volumes under the title of Ego, are a record of the British theatre of his era and also of his non-theatrical interests, including sports, social gossip and his private preoccupations with his health and precarious finances. In addition to drama criticism he wrote about the cinema and English literature for London newspapers, and published three novels, translated a play and had it staged in London, albeit briefly, and regularly brought out collections of his theatre essays and reviews.

Agate, the eldest child of Charles James Agate (1832–1909), a wholesale linen draper, and Eulalie Julia née Young, was born in Pendleton, near Manchester, England. His father had a keen interest in, and connections to, music and the theatre. Gustave Garcia, nephew to the prima donna Maria Malibran, was Charles's lifelong friend since they were apprenticed together in the cotton warehouse. Agate's mother was educated in Paris and Heidelberg, and was an accomplished pianist. Through Agate's family connections to the active German artistic community in Manchester, he had much exposure to performance in his youth. In October 1912, Sarah Bernhardt visited the Agate home, an indication of the family's position in the local arts scene. Agate's only sister, May, later studied acting under Bernhardt in Paris.

After education at Giggleswick School and Manchester Grammar School, where he was academically outstanding, he did not go to a university, but went into his father's business, where he worked for seventeen years. In his spare time he was a regular theatregoer, and admired and longed to emulate the critical writing of George Bernard Shaw in The Saturday Review. In 1906 he wrote a letter about drama to a local Manchester paper. The editor printed Agate's contribution and invited him to write a weekly theatre column. After a year Agate joined the Manchester Guardian's team of critics under the guidance of C. E. Montague. Even as a junior critic Agate did not hesitate to give bad notices to the leading figures of the English stage when he thought it justified. Within months of taking up his post, he wrote of Herbert Beerbohm Tree's performance as Richard II, "It was extraordinarily uninteresting, and it is amazing how badly a tragic part can fit an actor so fine as, in other directions, Mr. Tree undoubtedly is." Later, Agate was bested by Lilian Braithwaite, who responded to his assertion that she was "the second most beautiful woman in London" by replying, "I shall long cherish that, coming from our second-best theatre critic."

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