Mystery of the missing tapes

Selina Mills

Wednesday, 19th November 2008

Selina Mills on how some newly discovered tapes give us a glimpse into the life of Agatha Christie

Interestingly, and perhaps because of the frenzy of the publicity in 1926, Christie rarely gave interviews again, except in 1955 to the BBC and in 1974 to the Imperial War Museum about her experiences in a first world war dispensary — hence her knowledge of poisons. So the mere existence of these tapes is important. Speaking in an informal and relaxed tone, and continually hitting the pause button to think, and almost interviewing herself by answering hypothetical questions, she talks about everything from her pre-war travels and digs in the Middle East, her 1930 honeymoon in Dubrovnik with her second husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan, and wartime London. As you listen to her quiet rhythm and clipped syntax, it is hard not to be lulled into a previous era — a world of quiet assurance and ‘old England’ that we rarely hear these fast 21st-century days.

She mulls over her writing. When speaking about The Mousetrap, London’s longest-running play, she says its success was ‘90 per cent luck’ and that there was ‘a bit of something in it for everybody’, although she never imagined it would go on for so long. But she is also immensely humble: ‘I must say I had no feeling whatsoever I had a great success on my hands...I was a bit depressed about it, I remember.’ Yet she also believes deeply in her characters. In another tape, she explains how she came to create Miss Marple, the elderly spinster who acts as an amateur sleuth for 12 novels. She is adamant that Miss Marple is not based on her grandmother, but admits there are similarities: ‘She had this in common with my grandmother that, although a completely cheerful person, she always expected the worst of anyone and everything and, with almost frightening accuracy, was usually proved right.’