When their father is wrongfully imprisoned, the children are sent to live in an old village with a railway station, and they wait for him and try to get him back. Like the militaristic Captain Georg von Trapp in “The Sound of Music”, who summons his children with a whistle to parade them for visitors, the children in all these stories have one thing in common: – they all desperately want approval and affection, and they are willing to put up with a considerable amount of anxiety to get that. In “Mary Poppins”, Mary Poppins is actually not very nice, father Banks is absent and uncaring, and mother Banks is insecure and confused.Īs a child, I dreaded being left behind or abandoned, and when my parents took me to see the 1970 children’s film, “The Railway Children” (from the book by Edith Nesbit, 1906), it was one of my worst fears come to life. They all feature a missing, or withholding, parent or caregiver. But, there has always been a largely unacknowledged darker side to all these books. With its romanticised view of a middle-class family in 1910 London, UK, “Mary Poppins” is classic Christmas movie and TV fodder, along with “The Sound of Music“, “Peter Pan”, “The Railway Children” and other children’s favourites. The film centers on the life of Travers, shifting between 1907 with her childhood in Queensland, Australia, the 1961 negotiations with Walt Disney, and the subsequent making of “Mary Poppins” starring Julie Andrews as the umbrella-wielding Nanny and Dick van Dyke (he of the mock Cockney accent) as the chimney-sweep, Bert.

It is about the production of the 1964 Walt Disney Studios film version of the first “Mary Poppins” book, by the same name, and stars Emma Thompson (she of “Nanny McPhee”, talk about typecasting!) and Tom Hanks. Banks” is directed by John Lee Hancock from a screenplay written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith. Both books and author were products of their times. The Mary Poppins books were not altogether sweet and cuddly, and neither was P.L. I’m hoping it will have some bearing on the truth.

Banks” will premiere in movie theatres, and considering it is about the author of the “Mary Poppins” books, some people may expect it to be a bit like the books – ostensibly sentimental, nostalgic and sweet. Travers’ youth, development as an author, and negotiations with Disney during the making of the film, Mary Poppins. Here is an excellent analysis in the New Yorker of P.L.

Pl travers mary poppins books