‘We longed for Peter Pan to come for us: what could be more exciting?’

Growing up in JM Barrie’s house in Kensington, where Wendy and her family lived

When I tell people that I grew up in the house where Peter Pan was written they always ask, “What was it like?”. Of course there is no answer; every adult thing is equally baffling to children, and everybody’s own childhood oddities seem normal at the time. What do I remember? A lifelong discussion between family members as to which bedroom window Peter Pan came through. A logical shift from “If you don’t brush your teeth Peter Pan will come for you” to “If you don’t brush your teeth Peter Pan won’t come for you” – of course we longed for Peter Pan to come for us: what could be more exciting? A drawing of our house by Edward Ardizzone is in our edition of the book, proving beyond all doubt that the Darlings lived there and that Peter Pan was therefore real.

“In the Broad Walk you meet all the people who are worth knowing,” JM Barrie wrote, at a time when London was much smaller and more affordable and all kinds of interesting people probably did walk in the same park, Kensington Gardens. Is it lovely or oppressive to think of a more villagey world, where “all the people worth knowing” ran into each other? Barrie lived along the north side, on Bayswater Road. He wrote Peter Pan in this lovely early Victorian villa, with (now) a tall magnolia and a blue plaque. I planted the magnolia, for my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary. My family lived there from 1926 till last year, and I am feeling elegiac for the London that passed through it, that I knew (and when I didn’t, I knew the stories), and that no longer exists.

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