The Oldie

The Tale of Beatrix Potter

In the Beatrix Potter Gallery, Hawkshead, Alice Sage, a National Trust curator, is showing me a precious picture that takes me right back to my early childhood.

It’s a tiny illustration from The Tale of Benjamin Bunny. What a thrill to see the original painting after all these years – so small and fragile, and yet so full of life. Half a century since I first read her books, I still haven’t grown out of Beatrix Potter. Here, in the antiquated office where her husband, a local solicitor, used to work, her characters seem to live and breathe, just as they did when I was small.

In February, a Beatrix Potter exhibition opens at London’s Victoria & Albert

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