Mary Poppins She Wrote

Trade Paperback

The extraordinary life of Australian writer P.L. Travers

The story of Mary Poppins, the quintessentially English and utterly magical children's nanny, is remarkable enough. She flew into the lives of the unsuspecting Banks family in a children's book that was instantly hailed as a classic, became a household name when Julie Andrews stepped into the starring role in Walt Disney's hugely successful film, and was a sensation all over again when 'Mary Poppins' was adapted as a musical.

The fabulous English nanny was conceived by an Australian, Pamela Lyndon Travers, who in 1924 went from Sydney to London to work as a journalist. She became involved with theosophy and travelled in the literary circles of W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot. Most famously, she clashed with 'the great convincer' Walt Disney over the adaptation of the Mary Poppins books into film. Travers, whom Disney accused of vanity for 'thinking you [Travers] know more about Mary Poppins than I do', was as tart and opinionated as Julie Andrews's big-screen Mary Poppins was cheery and porcelain beautiful.

The clipped, strict and ultimately mysterious nanny was the conception of someone who remained thoroughly inscrutable and enigmatic to the end of her ninety-six years. Valerie Lawson's illuminating biography, MARY POPPINS, SHE WROTE, provides the only glimpse into the mind of this writer who fervently believed that 'everyday life is the miracle'.