(They, and two of the four new adaptations, were by Andrew Davies).
Some of the compositions are direct responses to the war, while others are new adaptations of traditional Vietnamese songs.
The Royal Shakespeare Company announced a winter program that includes new adaptations of Dickens's "Great Expectations" and Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" but no works by Shakespeare.
The War of the Roses will have three new adaptations – Henry VI in two parts and Richard III – and also star Michael Gambon, Keeley Hawes and Sophie Okonedo.
Two new adaptations of Ibsen and Strindberg classics -- both awash in marital woe and both adapted by bright American talents -- are wheeling into sight for possible spring productions.
Ben Stephenson, the BBC's controller, drama commissioning, said he hoped the new adaptations would return Christie to "the pantheon of truly great British writers" and added he was in discussion with the Christie estate about a "huge variety of things".
News of the commission has broken prematurely after the rival screenwriter Andrew Davies was asked at a broadcasting conference what new adaptations he was pondering, and mentioned the Zola novel.
Anatomists regularly discover new adaptations that can have implications for humans: understanding how whales withstand huge pressures, for instance, may lead to new treatments for brain injuries from combat explosions.
Philip Pullman, the celebrated author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, is to publish new adaptations of 50 of his favourite Grimm's Fairy Tales this autumn, 200 years after the works were first published.
The season includes the concluding instalments of The Hollow Crown, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Dame Judi Dench and Hugh Bonneville, in new adaptations of Henry VI (in two parts) and Richard III, brought to the screen by Sam Mendes.
This week alone, there are three major new adaptations – Beowulf (monster with post-festive figure lolloping round some sand dunes), Jericho (cashing in on vague post-festive Victorian feels), and the heaviest fruit on the tree of historical rinsement, that universal shorthand for wading through treacle, War And Peace (Sunday, 9pm, BBC1).
