Thank you, Smee! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

An excerpt from a film made by J. M. Barrie called The Yellow Week at Stanway has been posted on the Amazon page for my book Peter Pan's First XI:

http://amzn.to/bMLbIc

This excerpt was shot in 1923 and shows Nico Llewelyn Davies and friends playing cricket at the Stanway ground where Barrie spent many of his summers in the 1920s.

I believe that this is the only place on the internet where any part of this film can be viewed.

There is more information about the film on the BFI website:

http://bit.ly/8YZyIn

5ft 3 IS certainly short for a man, and a number of photographs show that Barrie was rather dwarfed by his contemporaries such as Arthur Conan Doyle. One of his fellow Allahakbarries remarked that 'he was small, frail and sensitive, rather awkward in his
movements, and there was nothing athletic in his appearance'. Barrie was a small man.

But I agree with Robert Greenham that he made up for his physical stature in many other ways:

Was ever set so huge a heart
Within so small a frame?
So much of tenderness and grace
Confined in such a slender space

Hi Andrew.

I've just returned from India where I've been for the past six months, hence my absence from this message board.

I have been thinking about Frank Thurston quite a bit in recent weeks and wondering what happened to him. He sounded like a fascinating character and P. G. Wodehouse mentioned him in a late interview in the 1970s as being rather like a real-life Jeeves. Do you know anything about his life after Barrie? Was he with him until the end? I was planning on doing a bit more digging around this, but please let me know if you have any information that you're able to share with me.

Other news is that Peter Pan's First XI, the account of the Allahakbarries and their adventures, is being published on May 13 by Hodder. People in Kirrieimuir are trying to organise a cricket match but there is certainly going to be a re-enactment of the 'test match' between Mary de Navarro's side and the Allahakbarries taking place in Broadway on June 20 as part of the Broadway Arts Festival: http://www.broadwayartsfestival.com/2010.php

I hope to make it to some of the Barrie 150 events in Kirriemuir myself and it would be a privilege to meet you there.

I'll update the forum with any further news about the cricket match.

All best wishes,
Kevin Telfer

Has anyone come across a Barrie work which he calls 'The Dead Donkey' in a letter to Mary de Navarro from 1923? He writes that it is now lost but I cannot find reference to it anywhere else either. He writes that he once showed it to Mary and that it is about himself.

Thanks for your reply. I noticed the book about your grandmother, which looks very interesting, and I will certainly buy a copy.

I have the David Rayvern Allen book sitting next to me at the moment but it only features the exact same photograph from Black Lake Cottage in 1905 as Andrew Birkin's book with Michael Llewelyn Davies standing in the middle of the group holding a cricket ball. My quest at the moment is to try and track down the other pictures which were taken by Edgar Horne on that same day (and possibly others).

Horne lived at Hall Place in Shackleford just down the road from Lower Bourne, and the Allahakbarries played a number of games there. It is now Aldro preparatory school. He was, I believe, MP for South West Surrey from 1910 to 1922 and a chairman of Prudential Insurance.