Geraldine McCaughrean’s official sequel to Peter Pan – Peter Pan in Scarlet – hits the bookshops today.
The long awaited sequel was commissioned by Great Ormond Street Hospital who were given the copyright to the original Peter Pan story by author J M Barrie.
Although UK copyright in the title expired in 1987, 50 years after Barrie’s death, former Prime Minister Lord Callaghan successfully proposed an amendment to the 1988 Copyright Act which gave the hospital perpetual right to royalties from any adaptation of the play.
With copyright in the original story expiring in 2007 within the EU and in 2023 for the USA the sequel will play an important part in protecting the characters outside the UK.
McCaughrean was commissioned to write the sequel in 2004, having beaten almost 200 other authors to the job.
Peter Pan in Scarlet is be published today in hardback by Oxford University Press.
BBC Radio 4 will be broadcasting a dramatisation of the book on 14th October which will also be released by BBC Audiobooks (cover artwork above).
