Queen Elizabeth’s childhood drawings for Peter Pan author JM Barrie are returning to the UK after being bought at auction in the US

A previously unseen drawing by a young Princess Elizabeth for Peter Pan author JM Barrie is coming back to the UK.

The child’s crayon picture of a house with lots of windows was sent to Barrie along with an apologetic letter from Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, in the 1930s.

In it she harshly called the drawing ‘very poor’ and said ‘Elizabeth insisted on putting in a roof with lots of little windows for the nurserymaid’.

The unique item had been owned by an American Anglophile for some years before it was put up for auction at Everard Auctions in Savannah, Georgia.

It was bought by a British online bidder for £3,350.

The drawing is thought to possibly be the late queen’s childhood vision of what Great Ormond Street Hospital’s Southwood Building should look like.

Barrie is known to have had a strong bond with the royal family in the 1930s and had also gifted the copyright for Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital, who were hoping to build a new wing.

The Southwood Building was officially opened by King George VI and the Queen Mother in 1938.

There is no date on the letter but it is thought it was written in the early 1930s when Princess Elizabeth would have been aged between four and six.

The letterhead says it was sent from 145 Piccadilly, which was the family’s London townhouse home before Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 and they moved to Buckingham Palace when Elizabeth’s father became king.

Sir James Barrie attended Princess Margaret’s third birthday party in 1933 and used a couple of lines she had said to him in a play he wrote called The Boy David (1936). 

It has also been reported he read stories to the two young princesses.

The letter mentions a charity dinner Barrie was attending, possibly for the hospital, and the Queen Mother asks Barrie not to appeal in Princess Elizabeth’s name.

The Queen Mother wrote: ‘I expect that you only wish to say that she drew a picture for you of what the hospital should look like.’ 

The dinner she is thought to have referred to could be a fundraising banquet for Great Ormond Street Hospital in December 1930 which was held in the author’s honour.

In the letter the Queen Mother mentions having met Cynthia, believed to refer to Lady Cynthia Asquith, Barrie’s private secretary.

Apart from the Peter Pan works, he left most of his estate to her after he died.

Amanda Everard, from the auction house, said: ‘This is a super interesting document linking a mother and daughter, albeit a princess and Queen at the time, with James Barrie, the author of Peter Pan.

‘But it’s so sweet, the drawing could have been done by any of our children and shows the human side to royalty.’