Practically perfect, a plaque for Poppins writer
THE author of the Mary Poppins books has been commemorated with a blue plaque to mark London History Day.
PL Travers lived at 50 Smith Street in Chelsea from 1946 to 1962. It was during this time that Walt Disney approached her about his plan to turn her creation into a movie.
The house was used as a model for the one lived in by the Banks family in the 1964 film.
Mary Poppins – who was played by Julie Andrews – moves into their home as a nanny for the family’s children.
Howard Spencer, English Heritage blue plaque historian, said the house ‘was in her mind’s eye’ when she told Disney how the home should look.
Travers, who died at 96 in 1996, published Mary Poppins in 1934 – the first of a series of eight books.