Peter Pan in Liverpool!

Sunday was spent filming in brilliant sunshine in Sefton Park, Liverpool.  The park is home to a recently restored statue - a direct copy of Frampton's figure of Peter Pan that stands in Kensington Gardens. 
 

It's the same image Margaret Tarrant used in her picture 'Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.'  Clearly enchanted, the two children gaze on... it perfectly captures childhood idyll and celebrates a lost age...

Anyone who's read 'The Last Changeling,' will immediately recognise the innocents are blithely unaware of the danger they are in, and suddenly the scene takes on a far more chilling aspect.  As Kate Bush sang, 'Peter Pan steals the kids in Kensington Park...'

In the novel, The Last Changeling, the Kensington statue is a meeting place, (in 1922), for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, (a firm believer in the reality of the fey realm), and Jim (JM) Barrie, his cricketing friend - and creator of Peter Pan. 

Barrie disliked the statue, declaring it failed to show the 'devil' in Peter!  His own foster son Michael Llewellyn Davies had been the model for Peter Pan, and upon his untimely death in 1921, his brother, Nico, described him as:

"the cleverest of us, the most original, the potential genius." 

 

 The newness of the restoration suited plans perfectly - a production company is engaged in the arcane art of making a book trailer for The Last Changeling, and a 'newer' looking version of the statue was needed for the forthcoming film.