Message text written by Mary Eld to "Discussion list for disabled students
and their support staff."
>Any one got some examples of other successful female dyslexics I have had
students complain - the famous ones are all actresses! Not so helpful when
at University.
<

Agatha Christie. Author. She wrote of herself, "Writing and
spelling were always terribly difficult for me. My letters were without
originality. I was . an extraordinary bad speller and have remained so
until this day." Agatha Christie is considered to be the best-selling
and most widely published author of all time; her play 'The
Mousetrap' was one of the longest-running plays in English theater
history.

Dorothy Einon. Psychologist, writer, lecturer at University College London.

Sophy Fisher - Journalist, former BBC correspondent to Geneva. "I see
children today doing everything I did to try to stop people seeing their
failings - disrupting the class, lurking at the back, faking illness,
losing homework. Letters on a page appeared a meaningless jumble - with
no more logic than alphabet spaghetti. But in my small village school I
couldn't really hide the fact that I was the class idiot." She eventually
went to Cambridge University.

Lorna Fitzsimmons. MP.

Esther Freud - Novelist. "When I was about 12, I decided I'd become an
actress; I felt that a writer was too solitary a career - and I found
spelling and writing difficult - I didn't know about copy editors in those
days".

Lynda La Plante - TV Series writer "Prime Suspect", "Widows", "She's Out",
"The Governor". "I wasn't diagnosed until I was 12. In those days they
thought that I was backward. I didn't really feel at home with the
written word until somebody gave me a typewriter. But, even today, I
never send things out without having them checked by an assistant."

Judith Holmes Drewery. Sculptor.

Zara Reid - Business woman. Runs CSI Promotions, a modelling management
business. "Right from the start of school, I knew I couldn't read and
write like the others. I got used to being called lazy or told I wasn't
concentrating. I spent the whole time at school being embarrassed, and I
was gutted to be put in the remedial class at secondary school. I left
school with no exams at all. I think being dyslexic has helped me. I
never went to college, I didn't do a PR course. I learnt everything I know
through life. I use a dictating machine to record meeting - if I try to
write things down, other people can't read them my notes and sometimes I
can't either. Life is now great, and you know what? I think a lot of the
people who were in the top band at school aren't doing much at all."

Jean
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Jean Hutchins, BDA Volunteer.
RSA Dip SpLD, AMBDA, retired.
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
BDA Web: www.bda-dyslexia.org.uk
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