BEATRIX POTTER loved the countryside and she spent much of her otherwise conventional Victorian childhood drawing and studying animals. Her passion for the natural world lay behind the creation of her famous series of little books. A particular source of inspiration was the English Lake District where she lived for the last thirty years of her life as a farmer and land conservationist, working with the National Trust. The Tale of Peter Rabbit, published in 1902, was her first book, expanded from an illustrated letter she had sent to a young friend who was ill. One hundred years later the classic tale of naughty Peter Rabbit's escape from Mr McGregor's garden still brings to children all over the world the pleasure that it gave to its very first reader.