JM Barrie, Scottish playwright and author of Peter Pan, was born in Kirriemuir, Angus, on May 9, 1860. This article was first published in The Telegraph in 2015.

"May God blast anyone who writes a biography of me," declared JM Barrie, in a curse scrawled across the pages of one of his last notebooks. Since his death in 1937, this dire warning has not prevented a slew of writers taking him on, the latest of which is Piers Dudgeon, whose book Captivated is subtitled The Dark Side of Never Never Land, and examines what he believes to be Barrie's sinister influence over the du Maurier family.

Dudgeon's portrait of Barrie – as a man who filled the vacuum of his own sexual impotence by a compulsive desire to possess the family who inspired his most famous creation, Peter Pan – is entirely at odds with the Hollywood version, Finding Neverland, in which Johnny Depp portrayed the author as a charming hero, devoted to large dogs and small children.

Here was the quirky little man who had already been celebrated by his contemporaries as a genius with a great heart, not least for his bequest of the copyright of Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, thus ensuring that the golden fairy-dust of his writing was liberally sprinkled over those in need.