Arthur Ransome, Kenneth Grahame, A. A. Milne, J. M. Barrie and Rudyard Kipling are just some of the names that form part of the series.
In one remarkable fifty-year period an unforgettable collection of classic children’s literature was created in Britain. An extraordinary range of writers turned to a form of writing where they created “Wonderlands”, “Neverlands” – places of happiness in which children were portrayed as living in a happy world, where sorrow and the difficulties and tragedies of adult life were simply removed.
Premiering on Sky Arts this August, four-part documentary series Wonderland explores the lives of the authors who wrote those stories – Arthur Ransome, Kenneth Grahame, A. A. Milne, J. M. Barrie, Rudyard Kipling, Erskine Childers, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Lewis Carroll, Beatrix Potter -and reveals the pain and tragedy behind their words.
This stream of great writing included classic tales such as Swallows and Amazons, The Secret Garden, The Jungle Book, The Tales of Beatrix Potter, and Alice in Wonderland but the scribes behind them had lives that consisted of great unhappiness, often using their creativity to overcome terrible adversities.
For these writers, childhood was a time of beauty and enchantment far removed from the reality of their adult lives. Author of The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame was overwhelmed with grief when his son aged 19 committed suicide, Rudyard Kipling lost not only his much-loved daughter Josephine, but also his son John, who died in the First World War, and A. A. Milne was never forgiven by his son for turning him into Christopher Robin.
Combining biography, literary extracts, and quotations, together with excerpts from the many films made of the work of these authors, the four-part series, Wonderland, focuses on a golden age of great writing which had extraordinary effects on – and came from – the writers’ own lives.
