James Barrie

(1860-1937)

James Matthew Barrie was born in 1860 in Scotland. For the first six years of his life, he lived in the shadow of his elder brother David. Just before his fourteenth birthday, David was killed in a skating accident. Barrie soon realised that, by dying so young, David would remain a boy forever in the minds of all those who had known him.

If Peter Pan had grown up then he would be in his nineties today. On average there are 25 productions of Peter Pan in Britain at Christmas. In France, Alain Marcel once staged a high-tech musical version with lasers and members of the cast flying over the audience.

In 1897, Barrie was a successful writer both in Britain and the United States. He was married to the actress Mary Ansell but they had no children. This didn't stop him from meeting children. One of these was a four-year-old girl called Margaret who called Barrie "my friendy". Because she couldn't pronounce her r's, the word "friendy" often sounded like "fwendy" or "wendy". She died when she was six but Barrie immortalised her in Peter Pan by calling his heroine Wendy, a name that he created.

Barrie's London home was very close to Kensington Gardens and it was here that he first met the Llewellyn Davies boys - George, Jack and Peter. He described their mother as "the most beautiful creature I had ever seen" and soon he was a frequent visitor to their house where he would tell the boys stories. One of these stories was about the youngest boy, Peter, who, according to Barrie, would one day fly away to Kensington Gardens so that he might be a boy forever. When children died, Peter would take them on a journey to a place called Never Never Land. When George heard the story, he said that "dying must be an awfully big adventure!". Barrie wrote the words down. They would later became the most famous words spoken in Peter Pan.

Barrie wrote the story several times before he decided to turn it into a play in 1903. The play's producer thought it would be a disaster but the story of The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up was an instant success.