J. M. Barrie documentary 

Another enjoyable documentary , sensitively approached and interesting. Thank you.

To live and die will be an awfully big adventure. Thank you for making this video.

Tender, informative and of course, enchanting. Thank you.

When The Little White Bird was published in 1902, it was hailed by The Times Literary Supplement as "an exquisite piece of work" and "one of the most charming books ever written". The same review also declared, "If a book exists which contains more knowledge and more love of children, we do not know it." But a modern reader might feel less straightforwardly celebratory. Take, for example, the following passage, when the narrator describes his night alone with the child: "David and I had a tremendous adventure. It was this - he passed the night with me... I took [his boots] off with all the coolness of an old hand, and then I placed him on my knee, and removed his blouse. This was a delightful experience, but I think I remained wonderfully calm until I came somewhat too suddenly to his little braces, which agitated me profoundly... I cannot proceed in public with the disrobing of David." After some time, David climbs into bed with the narrator. "For the rest of the night he lay on me and across me, and sometimes his feet were at the bottom of the bed and sometimes on the pillow, but he always retained possession of my finger..." Meanwhile, the adult lies awake, thinking of "this little boy, who in the midst of his play while I undressed him, had suddenly buried his head on my knee" and of his "dripping little form in the bath, and how when I essayed to catch him he had slipped from my arms like a trout."😅Gerald du Maurier's biographer, James Harding, was made decidedly uncomfortable by this scene, though veered away from any accusation of impropriety. "One needs a tough stomach to put up with Barrie in this mood," he wrote, in 1989. "No writer today would publish such an account without inviting accusations of paedophilia or worse. Yet Barrie, in the manner of Lewis Carroll and his nude photographs of little girls, was consciously innocent. His snapshots of the tiny lads [the Llewelyn Davies boys] frolicking bare-bottomed on the beach, the cowboy and Indian adventures he made up for them... were a means to enjoy the pleasures of fatherhood with none of the pains. In Sylvia du Maurier's children he discovered the ideal outlet for the frustrations which obsessed him." Dudgeon is unconvinced by Harding's phrasing - "How did he know that Barrie's innocence was conscious?" - but there is still no evidence to settle the argument. Having read Dudgeon's book, and re-read Birkin's, and then returned to my own research notes from the du Maurier archive and elsewhere, I remain just as uncertain about JM Barrie, whose chief aim seemed to be not to corrupt boys into adult desire, but for himself to rejoin them in the innocence of eternal boyhood, a Neverland where children fly away from their mothers and no one need grow old. True, there are letters of his that are odd, such as the one he wrote to Michael on the eve of his eighth birthday, in June 1908: "I wish I could be with you and your candles. You can look on me as one of your candles, the one that burns badly - the greasy one that is bent in the middle. But still, hurray, I am Michael's candle. I wish I could see you putting on the redskin's clothes for the first time... Dear Michael, I am very fond of you, but don't tell anybody."This is one of the few letters that have survived - Peter Llewelyn Davies destroyed nearly all of Barrie's vast correspondence with Michael in the melancholic period before he killed himself by diving under a Tube train at Sloane Square station. ("They were too much," was his only comment on the letters between Barrie and Michael.) Elsewhere, there are moments when Barrie seems to display an unsettling streak of casual sadism (not dissimilar to Peter Pan, whose capacity for cruelty was eradicated in the Disney version). For example, in The Little White Bird, the narrator declares, "I once had a photograph taken of David being hanged on a tree", which he sends to the child's mother: "You can't think of all the subtle ways of grieving her I have." Telegraph UK not sure what that all means🤷🏻‍♀️

It doesn't cost much to commission a statue and place it in a garden - also, in the white bird book, kennsington garden is the birthplace of the myth - the sparse garden is where many children walk through and play, and people love Peter Pan - it was a modest and perfect edition, adding to a magic about the place. People wanted him to elaborate on the character, to write peter pan, so it's always been for the people, so is the statue. I would love to see it.

Thank you so much. That was lovely and well done.

This was very well done. I have read several biographies of Barrie, and there was still information in this film that I did not know.

Perfectly done!

Love this. ❤️

Aaron Jones did a fantastic enjoyable job on J. M. Barrie's documentary. Could you do one of my favorite authors O. Henry? Thanks!!!

So interesting.

I gotta be honest, I had seen most movie versions of Peter Pan growing up, the 1953 Disney version being my favorite, but when I finally read the book originally title Peter and Wendy, I was sadly disappointed and I went in with an open mind. Normally, the book is better, but having read it three times, I feel that the movie versions told the story better, minus the 1924 silent movie version (I didn't bother with the the 2023 Disney remake). Here's why I feel that way: Many times when I was reading it, I honestly felt like I was reading a first draft--that's something ideally a reader should never feel when reading a finished work. In addition, Captain Hook and the pirates not only felt like an afterthought, they were an afterthought from a behind-the-scenes standpoint. It also felt like Barrie did a lot telling instead of showing--the rule is "show, don't tell", not the other way around. Furthermore, with one stark line in the prose, he turns Peter Pan from a cocky brat with some redeeming qualities into a sleazy cult leader with the memory of Dory from Finding Nemo. If that's the intent, so be it, but Wendy never makes that discovery for herself, so what was the point of including that one throwaway line to begin with? Even non-horror stories would take advantage of that. If Wendy did learn that, I highly doubt she would look back on Neverland with fondness like you would a good summer camp, and she wouldn't let her daughter and granddaughter go there either. Who would? I'm not expecting realism in a story like this, but a little credibility would've benefited the story immensely. Even back then it feels like a stranger danger PSA that misses the mark. I sure as hell didn't have these kind of issues when I read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and even The Chronicles of Narnia. Out of those four isekai stories, I rank Peter Pan dead last. J.M. Barrie can be thanked for that initial spark, but as I said before, I feel that most of the movie versions told the story better.

I loved this informative documentary. What a horrid, cruel "mother" he had! "...it's just me," caused me to burst into tears. I loved and encouraged my children EQUALLY. It is always the puritanical, legalistic & religious ones that are the cruelest.

This is an instance wherein I'm introduced to a new author.

What a hellish string of personal tragedies. From J.M. Barrie's mother Margaret who had to act as a mother to her own family starting at the age of only 8 years old, to the entire Barrie family with all their early childhood deaths and emotional suffering, J.M.'s wife Mary Ansell stuck in a chaste marriage for all those years, and of course the entire Llewelyn Davies family and all the death and depression they suffered... not to mention the sketchy way J.M. Barrie worked his way into the Llewelyn Davies' lives, and the quite possibly illegal way he took charge of the boys after their mother's death... this was a one hell of a depressing documentary about a complicated and fascinating subject.

Interesting

I gotta say that Conan Doyle being the only good cricketer is just like Tom Grennan being the only good footballer in last years Soccer Aid. Not trying to attack ppl, in case ur wondering.

TS 31:40 disease possibility (this note is for my own use) 🤔 TS 41:38 Cricket Players

🎂Sir James Matthew Barrie 05-09-2022

At least the narrator was honest at the outset about Mr J M BARRY & his predilection for the company of children. One of my most treasured possessions was " Peter Pan ". As an undergrad. I was somewhat disheartened to learn about this behaviour. I can only hope he chose to refrain & channelled his energy into erecting statues and writing wonderful stories.

Thrums not Thurms.

The narrator mispronounced several words. One example: the word "ancestral" becomes "ancestrial". Why wasn't someone else chosen?

Your Jane Austen doc was fabulous. I'm not sure if it's that Barrie's life story isn't interesting, it's not very well written or that the narration is monotonous and lacklustre but whatever the reason i didn't even get a third of the way through. Sorry but it's just too dull 😴

Good solid information, sadly peppered with a sexist bias throughout. ie 'died an old made at 54.' and endless unsympathetic comments of the mother. The repeated use of the word 'ladies' for women...etc .And not least, omitting to conclude that the use of the phrase 'He's a Peter Pan' is a derogatory term for... he's immature and irresponsible.

the voice of the commentator is penible and I don't like the moderns images .

Starting this film with an advertisement for vasectomies is just the same as punching your viewers in the testicles. The whole idea behind J.M. Barrie and Peter Pan was to inject some faith into childrearing. Add a little mystery too, and some hope for a better future. I guess you missed the thesis in the Peter Pan story, or perhaps it's more likely you never even watched the Peter Pan movie.

Very good. Shame about the terrible Scottish accent 😀