Kensington Gardens

Spanning more than a century from the late Victorian period - and the intimately-drawn details of the life of J. M. Barrie - to the dawn of the new millennium and the fractured life of an internationally acclaimed children's novelist, Peter Hook, Kensington Gardens weaves an intricate cat's cradle of narratives around the lysergic London of the Swinging Sixties and the boy who never grew up. Growing up in a vast west London estate called Neverland, Hook's childhood was shaped by the mysterious death of his younger brother, his parents' rock-n-roll lifestyle and his father's performances in a seminal band of the time. Yet despite such dysfunctional beginnings, Hook has become the most successful children's author of his generation as the creator of the time-travelling Jim Yang.