The creator ofPeter Pan, J.M. Barrie, was a hugely enthusiastic cricketer of very little talent. That didn't stop him from leading perhaps the most extraordinary amateur cricket team ever to have taken the field. Some of the twentieth century's most famous writers including A. A. Milne, P. G. Wodehouse and Jerome K. Jerome, regularly turned out for Barrie's team between 1890 and 1913. This very Edwardian vision of village cricket was only brought to an end by the First World War.
Those years of golden summers were recounted in Barrie's letters and journals, many revealed here for the first time. Cricket lovers will identify with Barrie's attempts to assemble a team of competent players.
In PETER PAN'S FIRST XI, Kevin Telfer weaves together cricket, literature, history, humour and biography to create an entertaining account of this little-known band of cricketing Peter Pans - and the age in which they lived.