Disney and the British Library teamed up this week for a very special star-studded event celebrating a very important date; the release of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland which receives it’s World Royal Premiere in London tonight…

‘Curiouser and Curiouser: The Genius of Alice in Wonderland’ was hosted by Mark Salisbury (author of Burton on Burton).  The event launched a new display containing highlights of the British Library’s Alice material and featured readings from a raft of talent from the forthcoming Disney release, including Hammer horror legend Sir Christopher Lee (The Lord of the Rings) and Michael Sheen (The Queen), as well as an appreciation of the Alice stories by Will Self. The first version of Alice in Wonderland on film was also screened, the BFI’s recently restored 1903 print – made just 38 years after the novel was published - with live piano accompaniment.

To coincide with the release of Tim Burton’s adaptation the BFI Southbank will go on to  screen a season of Alice films from 5 to 17 March. The season features Dennis Potter-scripted Alice (1965), Paramount's little-seen 1933 Alice in Wonderland staring Cary Grant, Gary Cooper and WC Fields, Gavin Millar's remarkable Dreamchild with nightmarish creations by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, Jan Svankmajer's creepy Alice (1988), Jonathan Miller's BBC production and the 1949 Anglo-French Alice Wonderland.

“There is nowhere in the world like London! Where you can go somewhere like the BFI and see Alice, or the British Library and see the manuscript and Christopher Lee and Richard Zanuch [producer on Burton’s Alice in Wonderland] in one evening!” enthused Michael Sheen who read extracts from the film. Michael Sheen, who plays the iconic White Rabbit, described working with Tim Burton: “I turned up with my rabbit tail and ears and Tim said they were surplus to requirements…” The impressive CGI effects renders Michael Sheen virtually unrecognizable except for his Blair hands “those are Blair hands!”

At the launch event Jaws Producer Richard Zanuch described the 3D extravaganza as Burton’s “most impressive work yet…”, while Burton muse and screen legend Christopher Lee read from The Jabberwocky and recounted early memories of Alice; “I read Alice at the age of about 7 or 8, two hundred years ago! It was my first book. At that age one is fascinated by fairy stories and magic and excitement and adventure… and at that age I knew every one of those characters and they made sense, although of course they are not sensible. It is a unique book written by a mathematician with a remarkable and inventive mind. It’s not really a children’s book, and as I have read it over the years, the deeper you get into it, the more adult it becomes. It’s very frightening…”

The exhibition, open during library hours in the John Ritblat Gallery, showcases the original manuscript of Alice in Wonderland, hand written and illustrated by Lewis Carroll in 1862. Bound in green morocco leather, the story was written “at the request of Miss Alice Liddell… without the least idea, at the time, that it would ever be published… (Carroll)”. The Lewis Carroll diaries, which describe Dodgson’s first meeting with Alice on the “golden afternoon” when he began his tale, are also on display, as well as unique original costume designs for the new Tim Burton film by two-time Academy Award winning designer Colleen Atwood (Memoirs of a Geisha, Chicago). Other treasures on show include the ‘Wonderland’ Postage Stamp-Case designed by Lewis Carroll and illustrations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Salvador Dali.

Read the full press release about ‘Curiouser and Curiouser: The Genius of Alice in Wonderland’ on the British Library website, and discover more of the magic through the British Library’s online gallery: www.bl.uk/alice.

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland goes on general release on 5 March 2010 – find out more about the film on the official Disney website.