Beatrix Potter with Patricia Routledge - video embed included

These video clips are available as embed code for users to play on their own websites. Please see terms and conditions when taking embeds. All clips must include the appropriate transmission credit.

More4 celebrates the 150th anniversary of the birth of Beatrix Potter in a special documentary presented by actress Patricia Routledge. The programme will include an exclusive first televised interview with Sir Quentin Blake, the illustrator of rediscovered Beatrix Potter story Kitty in Boots.

Beatrix Potter with Patricia Routledge will air tonight (Tuesday 26th January) at 9pm on More4.

Programme information

Following in the footsteps of the Edwardian publishing sensation, the JK Rowling of her day, Patricia travels from London to Scotland and the Lake District to discover what fired Beatrix’s imagination and where her love and understanding of animals was born.

Building on her own experience as an actress who played Beatrix on stage in the 1990s and her present role as patron of the Beatrix Potter society, Patricia discovers the woman behind the myth and reveals what led her to write and illustrate the twenty three little tales filled with animal characters with human habits and emotions that so many of us have grown to love from childhood.

Taking us on an enchanting journey through Beatrix’s life, Patricia meets experts, enthusiasts and publishers to reveal how a letter written to an ill little boy became Peter Rabbit, a blue coat wearing bunny that to this day is an international marketing sensation; what was happening in Beatrix’s personal life to inspire the story of Jemima Puddleduck? And what it means for millions to be able to stand by the wall where Tom Kitten sat only to be scolded by his mother when his clothes were ruined.

With access to rare drawings, letters and artefacts held at the V&A Archive, Patricia leads us into a magical world that captures the pioneering spirit of a genius who made her way firstly in the cut-throat, male dominated Edwardian publishing industry, and then as a leading sheep-breeder and conservationist. The programme explores her legacies in the extensive Lake District properties she left to the National Trust, and of course in her books.

Globally a Beatrix Potter book is sold one every fifteen seconds. She is as popular now as she ever was. And her story is not over.

The documentary will also include an exciting Beatrix Potter publishing announcement as well as an exclusive interview and illustrations revealing how 75 years after she died, it is possible for Beatrix Potter still to be surprising us today.