My good friends in Kirriemuir are putting on a cricket match on Sunday, September 5 at what must be one of the most beautiful and unusual cricket grounds anywhere in the world — on Cemetery Hill in Kirrie, where J. M. Barrie himself is buried.

Beautiful, because of the tremendous views (on a clear day) up to the southernmost part of the Cairngorm massif — Glen Clova and Glen Prosen — where there was still snow on the highest tops when I visited in May this year for the celebrations of Barrie’s birth 150 years ago.

Unusual, because it is the only cricket ground I know of with a pavilion which contains a camera obscura — a device used to look at the amazing view through a full 360 degrees — which is maintained by the National Trust for Scotland. Barrie paid for the pavilion and the camera obscura, perhaps in part because this is where he learnt to play cricket in his early youth, using the cemetery gates as make-believe stumps.

So there is no better place to stage this cricket match: Peter Pan’s Second XI v. The Wayward Gentlemen, which is a commemoration of a number of things: Barrie’s birth 150 years ago, the final outing of a team called the Allahakbarries 80 years ago in 1930, and the anniversary of the pavilion and camera obscura, which were inaugarated the same day as the cricket match in 1930. Barrie was twelfth man that day, aged 70, but did not play. Instead he tossed the coin and made a speech. Two Australian test players — Macartney and Mailey — both friends of Barrie, were there though and they helped the Allahakbarries to easily overcome a West of Scotland team no doubt slightly in awe of the two Australians’ talents.

I  cannot, unfortunately, make it to this fixture as I am away in France, but I hope that you can. A visit to the ground is worth it alone. I hope that the sun shines and that all is set fair for a great contest that will do justice to the ground and the historical associations the game is commemorating.

J M Barrie was an occasional amateur film-maker. One of his films, shot in 1923, is called The Yellow Week at Stanway, and an excerpt from it (featuring cricket) has now been posted on the Amazon page for my book Peter Pan’s First XI.

The footage shows a team of Nico Llewelyn Davies’s friends playing cricket at the Stanway ground in Gloucestershire. Barrie spent much of his summer at Stanway House throughout the 1920s and it was only a few miles away from Broadway (across the border in Worcestershire) where the Allahakbarries challenged a team of artists for three summers between 1897 and 1899.

As far as I know this is the only place on the internet where it is possible to watch any of this film. It is possible to watch the whole thing by physically going to the BFI on London’s South Bank and there is more information on the film on the BFI’s own website, including a full synopsis.

One of J. M. Barrie’s ‘hints to his team from their captain’ was that: ‘No batsman is allowed to choose his own bowler. You needn’t think it.’ The same applies to authors and critics.

My book Peter Pan’s First XI has been reviewed three times in the past week in the Irish Times, the Guardian and the Financial Times. It’s been a mixed bag. The Irish Times review, by John S Doyle, was exceptionally positive. Doyle concluded by writing that:

‘This engaging book scrutinises its many subjects well, but with a kind eye. The author is obviously himself passionate about cricket, and explains enough of the pleasures of the game to pass on some of that passion to the reader . . . ’

The reviews in the Financial Times and the Guardian were a combination of the good and the not-so-good. Stephen Moss in the Guardian wrote that ‘the book is deeply suggestive, without ever exhausting any of its numerous themes.’ And that it is ‘a chancy cameo, then, rather than a dutifully compiled double-hundred; an innings more suited to village cricket than a Test match. Which, in its way, is not inappropriate for a book about this most unlikely of cricket teams.’

Unfortunately Moss makes a careless mistake when he reports J. M. Barrie writing of Jerome K. Jerome, that ‘he was a great cricketer, at heart.’ The description is actually Jerome writing about Barrie which is a little bit embarrassing when Moss uses it as an example of ‘Barrie’s wonderfully dry observations’ though it does rather sound like something that Barrie might write, it’s true.

And I believe he is both mistaken and also rather disingenuous in his review when he accuses me of using a ‘kitchen sink approach to history’. He lists what he sees as the offending examples here:

‘Thus, towards the end of the book, we get Milne joining the team in 1910 as the “last member” of the Allahakbarries (cue six pages on his literary career), a politician member of the team being beaten up by Suffragettes, a sensational innings in a first-class match in 1911 by a Nottinghamshire player who has nothing to do with the Allahakbarries, the death of Scott on his expedition to the South Pole in 1912, and the almost contemporaneous sinking of the Titanic (perhaps included because one of those killed was an artist who had played against the Allahakbarries).’

Moss implies that these examples have been plucked from the annals of history as some kind of ‘pre-war best hits’ selection but in fact they are all directly connected with J. M. Barrie and his cricket team, the subject of my book after all, with the sole exception of the 1911 innings (one of the most remarkable knocks in cricketing history about which an entire book was written by John Arlott). He fails to mention in the review that Scott was one of Barrie’s greatest friends or that Frank Millet, the artist who went down in the Titanic, was a key member of the Broadway side that the Allahakbarries played against between 1897 and 1899. It is these remarkable connections which make this such a compelling story; without them it would indeed be a kitchen sink approach to history, with them ‘Barrie’s haphazard team [becomes] a prism through which to view the wider pre-war period’ according to The Sunday Times’ literary editor Andrew Holgate, whose review of my book really seems to ‘get it’.

Stephen Moss, it seems, did not, but of course he is entitled to his view, however much I might disagree with it. If authors could choose their critics after all, we’d be hitting metaphorical boundaries all day long. And where’s the fun in that?

Oh, hang on a minute . . .

There was a piece on the Allahakbarries and my book Peter Pan’s First XI in the Scotland on Sunday yesterday.

Read it here.

I have been invited to play at Broadway in the Cotswolds for a team captained by artist Jeremy Houghton in a re-enactment of the series of test matches that took place between 1897 and 1899 between J. M. Barrie’s amateur team the Allahakbarries and a Broadway XI.

For the ’sentamentalist for the simple life’ such as I am (see previous blog post), this sounds like a great day out.

The match is on June 20. Further reports on the latest developments will follow soon.

J. M. Barrie would have been 150 years old on May 9 this year had he not died in 1937 and it seems a happy coincidence that my book on his cricket team PETER PAN’S FIRST XI is being published just a few days after this anniversary on May 13.

In honour of this anniversary there are a number of events taking place in Kirriemuir, Scotland, the town where Barrie was born in 1860. These are mainly being organised by the Kirriemuir Heritage Trust — take a look at their events calender if you are interested in attending. I would particularly love to see Andrew Birkin, the author of J. M. BARRIE AND THE LOST BOYS, deliver his lecture on Barrie on May 9, but don’t yet know whether I’ll be able to make it.

There is also talk of a cricket match being organised in Kirriemuir though a date for this has not yet been arranged.

One cricket match that definitely is taking place, however, is at what was another special place to Barrie — Broadway in the Cotswolds. As part of the Broadway Arts Festival a cricket match has been arranged for Sunday, June 20, which will be in the spirit of the encounters between the Allahakbarries and Broadway: an annual fixture in 1897, 1898 and 1899. The key figure for the Broadway side in those original encounters was the famous Shakespearean actress Mary de Navarro. She did not play but was nonetheless important enough for Barrie to refer to her as ‘The dear enemy of the Allahakbarries’. I had lunch with her grandson Michael de Navarro yesterday, who still lives in the same house that his grandmother lived in at the same time as those matches were being played, more than a century ago.

I will definitely be going to this cricket match and hope that I might even find a way to play. More news on that as soon as I have it.

Broadway in the Cotswolds, that is, rather than theatreland in New York, though J. M. Barrie has a connection with both places.

We went to Broadway for the weekend, doing research for my book about J. M. Barrie’s cricket team, the Allahakbarries, who played here against a team of artists and mucisians for three consecutive years: 1897, 1898 and 1899. The Broadway team was captained by a remarkable woman - an American actress called Madame de Navarro - and we were invited for a drink at the house where she once lived, Court Farm, by her grandson Michael de Navarro, a QC and keen cricketer.

We also had a drink at the Lygon Arms (pictured), a famous old coaching inn and for more than a century, now, a rather posh hotel. Barrie and his band of cricketing writers, artists and politicians had banquets at the hotel after their cricket games. The Lygon Arms then was a rather more simple place than it is now, as it was taken over in 1904, the same year that Peter Pan was first performed, and turned into a luxurious retreat where many global celebrities have since stayed.

A short walk from the village along the Cotswold Way brought us to Stanway House, which many years later, after the First World War, Barrie rented from the Earl of Wemyss during the summer. He also paid for a cricket pavillion to be erected there (pictured), though the Allahakbarries never played on this cricket pitch for their last game had been in 1913.

We drove back to London arriving just before heavy snow muffled all the noise of the city. And the following day I watched adults join with children playing in the thick white covering, pretending that they, like Peter Pan, can be forever young.

My newly updated site has been launched today. And for the first time it means I can write a blog: so here it is.

I’m just about to start writing my book Peter Pan’s First XI, which is being published by Hodder in 2010. It’s about a very literary cricket team featuring famous writers including J.M. Barrie, A. A. Milne, P. G. Wodehouse and Jerome K. Jerome. Arthur Conan Doyle was also a member, showing that although having an initial in your name was helpful, it was not an essential requirement to joining the club.

Read my blog over the coming months to follow my progress while I write this book - and find out what else I’ve been up to.