Whitbread winner to write sequel to 'Peter Pan'

To embark on a sequel is to ask for trouble; for every Godfather: Part II, a film widely acknowledged to surpass the original, there is a Pemberley - Emma Tennant's follow-up to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice - which divided critics and fans alike.

So when Geraldine McCaughrean won a worldwide competition yesterday to write the sequel to J M Barrie's immortal Peter Pan, she was handed what could be a poisoned chalice. Ms McCaughrean, three times winner of the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year prize and the author of more than 130 books and plays, said it was only after beating 200 others to the commission that the pitfalls occurred to her.

Initially, she was "absolutely thrilled" at the prospect of breathing new life into Peter Pan and Wendy. Then she began to consider how proprietorial Peter Pan fans were likely to be, before finally resolving to make the most of the opportunity. "I've just got to make sure I have fun doing it," she said when the result was announced at the London Book Fair.

At least in the case of Peter Pan II, a good cause is attached. The competition was launched by the trustees of Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, who have owned the intellectual property rights to Peter Pan since they were presented by Sir James Barrie in 1929. But on the 70th anniversary of his death, in 2007, the original comes out of copyright in the UK.

Creating a new work will give the children's hospital decades more royalties from their valuable bequest, trustee Kit Palmer said. The sequel is expected to be published next year. For any author, film-maker or television producer, the potential benefits of a sequel are clear. They can capitalise on a cast of characters which already has admirers, as Michael Dibdin did brilliantly with The Last Sherlock Holmes Story and the television series Frasier did with Dr Frasier Crane from the earlier comedy Cheers.

In films, another factor in the success of a sequel appears to be the involvement of the original winning team, as occurred with Francis Ford Coppola and his Godfather trilogy. Yet a pitfall for any follow-up lies in the very affection for characters that a successful original encourages. As Kate Mosse, the author and founder of the Orange Prize for women's fiction, said: "I have not read any of the high-profile sequels to [Margaret Mitchell's] Gone with the Wind or Pride and Preudice or [Daphne du Maurier's] Rebecca quite deliberately, because they are all books I feel I have a relationship with. "I don't have any problem when an author decides to take on his or her characters. That's completely legitimate. But when someone else does it, there's a feeling they're trespassing on my rights as a reader."

The one exception, she decided, was Peter Pan. "In that case, the rights were bequeathed to Great Ormond Street and it seems to me that Barrie already had a sense of the legacy of Peter Pan. He had made it clear that Peter Pan should achieve something in the real world - the world that the book is an escape from. And Geraldine is a writer who has consistently proven that she can take classic stories and re-write them."Ms McCaughrean's most recent success came in January when she won her third Whitbread prize for Not The End of the World, a re-telling of the story of Noah's Ark. And she has produced an entire series of child-friendly versions of stories such as The Canterbury Tales and 1001 Arabian Nights.

However, she was far from alone in her desire to produce a successor to Peter Pan. The battle for the commission saw immense interest from Italy and submissions from as far afield as Australia and Canada. One writer flew from his home in South Africa to deliver his sample chapter and synopsis on the deadline day for entries. David Barrie, J M Barrie's great, great nephew and one of the judges of the competition, said choosing a winner had been a "tough challenge" but he thought J M Barrie "would have liked her style".

Broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, another of the judges, praised Ms McCaughrean's entry, which has the working title Captain Pan, for being "most incredibly imaginative and quirky and charmingly skewed". Ms McCaughrean, 53, said that she was making "no literary claim of the need for a sequel" and that she was not sure that J M Barrie would have sanctioned her to create a successor to his great work. "Barrie didn't write one and the original is complete and entire in itself," she said.

"But if someone needs to do it, then please let it be me, because it will be just such a treat to spend time in Barrie's imaginary world and to be associated with the phenomenon of Peter Pan. "I went to see Finding Neverland two weeks after I had submitted the sample and I found myself weeping salt tears at the sheer possibility of being associated with Peter Pan. Mr Barrie, cover your eyes and count to 20 - I'm going to borrow some of your characters."

- INDEPENDENT