Twenty Great Books with TENNIS at their heart
A Literary Walking Tour through Wendy Darling’s LONDON
1st July 2026
#TalkingLocation with Cynthia Pelayo author of It Came From Neverland. A Literary Walking Tour through Wendy Darling’s London
London is a city that holds its ghosts close.
When I set out to write It Came From Neverland, I knew the city itself had to be more than just a backdrop on the page. This is a novel about what happens when a well-known tale turns dark and when the stories we tell children reveal their teeth. And London, with its layered history of fog and folklore, vanished children and the unjustly condemned, was the only city that could hold this story.
My Wendy Darling walks through a London that is beautiful, yet haunting in equal measure, and nearly every location she encounters in this city is real.
If you wanted to walk Wendy’s London today, here is where you would go.
Kensington Gardens and the Round Pond
This is where it all begins.
J.M. Barrie first imagined Peter Pan while walking through Kensington Gardens. He would later have a statue commissioned and placed near the Long Water. But it’s the gardens that have a history much older and stranger than even Barrie himself could ever imagine. This was royal land, but the folklore that clings to it predates the monarchy.
There are stories of fairy rings in the grass, of fae appearing at dusk along the elm walk. And of course, there have been murmurs of Changelings, who climbed into unattended prams, and assumed the role of a human child.
In my novel, Kensington Gardens is where Peter Pan lurks. Where he watches children, measuring which one
he will approach with the promise of Neverland, and of never growing up. And in my story, a series of children disappears every twelve years, this cycle repeating for so far back that when Wendy appears at Scotland Yard for help, she discovers records stretching back as far as investigators can remember.
The beauty of the gardens is part of the trap. People bring their children here, hoping to have a restful day. Nannies and mothers and fathers allow little ones to run ahead, not knowing what will meet them when they are out of sight. And somewhere up in a branch, in those trees, there is always something watching.
Visit at dusk, when shadows spread across the landscape, and maybe then you will understand what Barrie understood, how this place could so easily generate stories.
The Thames
The Thames in 1914 was not the tourist draw that it is today. Back then, it was fairly dark, and industrial, 
carrying the weight of decades and decades. In this story, Wendy walks past the river, feeling the scale of something larger than her own grief creeping in. The water here moves with purpose, carrying things, and threatening to pull other things under.
If you pass the river at night, make note of how black the water looks. Admire how the city lights reflect across the surface, almost as if all of those sparkling lights are floating on the river itself.
You will feel what Wendy senses, that the river knows secrets, but keeps them carefully guarded.
Big Ben and Westminster
In the novel, Big Ben booms through all of London. The sound is both a comfort and of course a ticking clock. The war is advancing. Children are going missing. And Wendy hears Big Ben from different points throughout the city. Its sound reminds her that the ordinary world is slipping away, and a new world is appearing through the fractures she is experiencing in the number of crows appearing, and the shadows stalking her.
From Westminster, Wendy and her brother walk to Scotland Yard. The stones are slick from the previous night’s rain, the gray building rising from the mist. Inside, the missing children are reduced to just names and dates in a ledger. Scotland Yard has moved location since 1914, but still, one can imagine Wendy walking into the original location, asking to see the records, all proof of boys Peter Pan has lured away.
The British Museum
Wendy and her brother Michael visit the British Museum in the hopes that some history about Kensington Gardens could answer for what Peter Pan is, and they get very close. A childhood friend who works in the Folklore and Antiquities section of the museum greets them and leads them to volumes that are not accessible to the public.
It is in these restricted stacks where Wendy learns about Changelings, and about how fairies take what they desire, and what they desire most of all are children. If a child answers a fairy’s call, the fairy will take the child’s name and replaces it with a binding one. This is what Peter does to the Lost Boys, he takes them and their name and gives them a new one, nicknames we have come to recognize, like Tootles, Nibs, Curly, and so on. And this fate is what Wendy escaped as a child, having her name, and thus herself, stolen forever.
The British Museum’s reading room is a beautiful space in London, and it’s also a space where truth lives.
Bethlem Royal Hospital, Bedlam
When Wendy tells the truth about what happened to her, the response is predictable for that time period, she is sent to Bethlem Royal Hospital for observation. Later nicknamed Bedlam, the institution’s very name became a code word for chaos and madness. Bethlem is where London locked away its inconvenient women, the ones who saw things and said things and refused to look away from injustices.
In the novel, Wendy is sent to Bethlem for a short period of time after she returns from Neverland, and the place then becomes a threat that hangs over her entire life, the continual threat of being locked away forever.
The Bethlem Royal Hospital still exists, but it’s located at a new site. The former location houses the Imperial War Museum, a building which once housed madness now holds memories of war. That layering is very London. The city buries one horror beneath the other.
Marigold House
In the novel, the orphanage where Wendy teaches is fictional. However, it is built from research into real institutions from the time period. I pictured a stately home covered in dark wood, grand staircases, long hallways, rooms large enough to serve as dormitories, an expansive dining room, and gardens covered with trees and bushes and all sorts of colorful flowers and plants.
Orphanages in 1914 London housed children whose parents had died, disappeared, or simply could not care for them. During the war, as more men left and women found themselves struggling to support and care for their children, orphanages took more and more children into their care.
It was important also that Marigold House felt like a house that would later be converted into an orphanage. Many buildings at the time, schools and churches, would later be converted to serve the war efforts, to care for the injured returning from war, to feed people and so on.
I wanted Marigold House to feel warm and safe, but I wanted to also show how that safety could be betrayed when the children came under threat.
The Lamplighters
When thinking about London in the early 1900s, I thought of fog and cold and mist, but I also thought of light. One detail I kept returning to was the lamplighters. In 1914, London’s streets were still lit by gas. Each evening, men who worked as lamplighters walked their designated routes, reaching up with long poles to ignite the mantles. Wendy passes them on her walk home from the hospital. These flickering gaslights are part of the rhythm of her city, the day ending, darkness arriving, and humans pressing flame to gas to light the way. Today, there are few gas lamps in London. However, you can still find some if you look closely. Just stand beneath one at dusk, and be sure to note the shadows around you, to see if any are moving in mysterious ways.
CYNTHIA PELAYO
Cynthia Pelayo is the Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Forgotten Sisters, Children of Chicago, and The Shoemaker’s Magician. In addition to writing genre-blending novels that incorporate fairy-tale, mystery, detective, crime, and horror elements, Pelayo has written numerous short stories, including the collection Lotería, and the poetry collection Crime Scene. The recipient of the 2021 International Latino Book Award, she holds a master of fine arts in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She lives in Chicago with her family. Her latest novel It Came From Neverland is available wherever books are sold. For more information, visit www.cinapelayo.com.
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