My mind is not a bed to be made and re-made.

Agate volunteered in May 1915 at the age of thirty-seven for the Army Service Corps and was posted to France. All these are reflected in his diaries publiJames Agated between 1935 and his death in a series of volumes entitled Ego Ego 2 Ego 3 etc. In 1919 he publiJames Agated a second book of essays Alarums and Excursions.

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 publiJames Agated 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. James EverJames Agated Agate (9 September 1877 – 6 June 1947) was a British diarist and critic.