Piers Dudgeon and "Captivated"

[Westh76]

You're not alone - as you can see from the various posts on this subject, and Andrew's letter to Chatto, the original publishers in the UK. At least by borrowing the book from the library, you didn't contribute to Dudgeon's royalties.

[andrew]

btw, Chatto never bothered to reply! I shall be venting my own spleen @ JMB's 150th...

[Smee]

I took a look at Neverland (formerly Captivated) at my local bookstore this weekend.  He even gets pictures wrong!  The picture of Michael which Barrie had on his window overlooking the Thames is labeled as being George [note - I reread the thread and see that Andrew picked that out right away].  A picture of Sylvia when she was in her thirties is said to be her in her last illness. Such sloppiness does not produce confidence - and that is even before you get to the equally sloppy text!

The pictures in "Captivated" are not only bad labeled but another way to twist real facts to make them fit in Dudgeon's peculiar fantasy about Barrie. In the paperback edition you can see two pictures, one of them labelled "Barrie, still impish in 1920 before Michael's death". But this is one of the portraits of 1912 with Michael and Barrie dressing in fishing gear in Lissie Caswell Smith's studio.

The next is labeled "Barrie inconsolable a year later. He is wearing the Trilby hat wich -in Daphne stories- is the symbol of Svengali's hypnotic power, it's appropriator  the personification of evil.” As a matter of fact the picture is one of the taken in 1928 -not 1921- with Barrie in a roof or a balcony and a misty background. The point is not the wrong date but the fact that Barrie is wearing his classic Homburg hat, not a Trilby.

Leaving aside the stupid idea that a man with a Trilby could be the "personification of evil", I wonder what kind of "personification of evil" represents for Dudgeon a man who wears a Homburg.

[Sylvia8]

I don't think I want to spend 10 £ to read his book.

J.M.B. had a Doctor's writing or even a fly's one! It's hard for a fly to try and write clearly, you know... Wasn't he writing with his not writing hand very often?

And of course, in the next paragraph of Sylvia's will, it can't be more obvious that he was a guardian of the boys.