Margaret Rutherford

She was one of our most individual actresses, appearing in such thoroughly English classics as Blithe Spirit, The importance of Being Earnest, Passport to Pimlico and I'm All Right, Jack! But above all she was Miss Marple, in four films - and entirely created for the screen the role of Agatha Christie's elderly and fearless private detective that subsequent actresses like Joan Hickson and Geraldine McEwan have continued. She first played Miss Marple at the age of 70, and insisted on wearing her own clothes to feel right in the part. But it was as a comic actress that she enjoyed her finest hours - she admitted, however, that she didn't set out to be funny: her appearance, with its air of doleful, distracted confusion, meant people inevitably saw her so. Andy Merriman's biography is the first for over 20 years, and by the author of a very well-received authorised biography of Hattie Jacques Aurum published three years ago - "What an altogether good book this is - excellently researched and infused with a love of its subject", said the Daily Telegraph. Andy Merriman is also the author of Hattie (978 1 84513 362 7) and A Minor Adjustment, a book about his daughter who has Down's syndrome. He lives in London