СОСТАВИТЬ 8 ВО ПО ТЕКСТУ ПИСЬМЕННО:
Lying undisturbed for more than 40 years, audio tapes bearing the unmistakeable voice of Agatha Christie have been discovered that show how she modelled Miss Marple on her own grandmother. Her grandson Mathew Prichard stumbled upon 27 of the half-hour long tapes in a dusty cardboard box
as he cleaned out a storeroom in Greenway, the Georgian property overlooking the Dart estuary in Devon that Christie called "the loveliest place in the world".
The tapes, which nobody knew existed, are the raw material on which part of her autobiography was based.
Working alone at her own unhurried pace, the ageing Christie dictated the tapes on a Grundig Memorette machine in the mid 1960s.
Her rich, authoritative voice offers a wealth of insights into her life and how she developed her most beloved characters.
Among them is her description of Jane Marple - and how she partially based the genteel sleuth on her grandmother.
Although she insisted that Miss Marple was in no way "a picture of my grandmother," she did admit the two shared an important trait.
Speaking with a calm and deliberate authority, Christie said of her grandmother: "Although a completely cheerful person, she always expected the worst of anyone and everything. And with almost frightening accuracy (she was) usually proved right."
Her grandmother would say "I shouldn't be surprised if so-and-so was going on," Christie recalled. "And although with no grounds for these assertions, that was exactly what was going on. Christie did not intend Miss Marple to be a permanent character, the tapes reveal. But the sharp-witted spinster "insinuated herself so quietly into my life that I think I hardly noticed her arrival."
Rolling the 'r' to dramatic effect, she dictated: "I didn't know then that she would become a rival to Hercule Poirot."
Another extract from the tapes, revealed today by the Christie Archives Trust to mark the 118th anniversary of her birth, explain that she thought the fastidious Hercule Poirot and the indomitable Miss Marple should never meet.
