Andrew O'Hagan

Somehow immortality is not all it's cracked up to be.

But it's a bit of a curse, actually, for Peter.

And that book carries all that in the form of a children's story.

And it's actually like so many children's stories.

There's something quite frightening at the centre of it.

I think so.

I mean, who would be Peter in the end?

I mean, you want to be Wendy.

Wendy is the one with the real wings.

That's the irony of that story.

She might be tied to terra firma, to solid ground, but actually that's where you would want to be as a human being.

Because this creature, Peter Pan, is condemned in a sense, trapped, imprisoned in youth.

And I mean, for Mayflies, that was a theme that was just staring at me.

Because what is memory if not a kind of entrapment?

You look back at your childhood and you think, well, you can take pleasure in it because it's gone, really.

But if you'd always been stuck back there, never able to grow, well, that's a different sort of nightmare to conjure with.

She's a furious woman.

What a pleasure.

Well, you know, in a way I shouldn't be pleased because it's bad to cause people to be upset.

But, you know, your reaction was pretty much mine in writing it.