A FANTASTIC and magical story written by best-selling author Neil Gaiman is coming to Woking.

Gaiman says his childhood is the inspiration for The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which was adapted for the stage by the National Theatre.

“It began with me wanting to try and explain to my wife where I grew up and what that world was like then,” he explains. He spent his early years in East Grinstead, West Sussex.

“I couldn’t take her to where I grew up because the place had long since been demolished, and it’s now covered by lots neat little housing estates. So it was kind of an effort to try and evoke a past and a sense of place.”

The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which was Book of the Year in 2013 and has sold more than 1.2 million copies, had been rattling around his head for a while.

“I literally took the oldest idea that I had ever had,” he says. “I think it’s strange that, at the age of 61, I still haven’t used up all the ideas that I had for stories before I was 40.”

His previous stories included chart-topping graphic novels like Stardust, The Sandman, Coraline as well as books such as Good Omens, which was co-authored with Sir Terry Pratchett.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane has been brought to the stage by director Katy Rudd and script adaptor Joel Horwood. “We struck gold with Katy,” says Gaiman. “She is emerging as one of our great directors and I feel very fortunate at having begun work with her at the early stages of her career.

“But I am astonishingly Darwinian in my take on adaptation. The adaptation of my first graphic novel was so faithful, every word was up there on that stage.

“It didn’t work because moments that were important in the novel became throwaway on the stage. Minor brief allusions became huge and overpowering. I realised then that you have to translate. What can you do on the stage that you can’t do in a book?”

The play tells the story of a man returning to his childhood home to find himself standing beside the pond of the old farmhouse where he used to play. He is transported to his 12th birthday when his friend Lettie claimed it wasn’t a pond, but an ocean – a place where everything is possible.

Plunged into a magical world, their survival depends on their ability to reckon with ancient forces that threaten to destroy everything around them.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is at the New Victoria Theatre from Tuesday to Saturday, 24-28 January.