PHOTOGRAPHS of Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, are to go on display for the first time at the National Portrait Gallery.

Historian Simon Schama has created the exhibition accompanied by a book, which explains the pair’s complex relationship. He said the author’s photographs were his second attempt to keep Alice forever as a child.

The pictures were taken by Charles Dodgson – Lewis Carroll was his literary pseudonym – between 1858 and 1870.

In the extract accompanying Alice’s photos Mr Schama said: “Charles Dodgson tried to capture Alice and keep her forever in this dreamscape of childhood twice over: first in the photographs of the three Liddell sisters from 1856 to 1858 and then, of the ‘wonderland’ he created.”

In 1862 a 10-year-old Alice asked the Oxford University mathematics lecturer to entertain her and her sisters – the daughters of his friend Henry Liddell – on a boating trip from Folly Bridge in Oxford to Godstow.

He told the girls a story about a girl called Alice and her adventures after she fell down a rabbit-hole and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1865. The photographs – first found in 2002 – show Alice aged six in various poses and then there is one image of Alice, aged 18.

The historian said there was a marked difference in Carroll’s relationship between the girl photographed with her sisters and the 18-year-old woman.

He added: “It’s as if the sisters were as much the makers of their images as the photographers; full collaborators in their poses.”

An 18-year-old Alice was brought to the author’s studio to have her picture taken again, and Mr Schama said: “Her share of the command has all gone in Dodgson’s photograph of the 18-year-old Alice.

“Hands folded, she is resigned to the imprisoning chair.

“It is possible that this face is imprinted with the pain of adolescent understanding about what she had been subjected to as a child.

“But the awkwardness is much more likely to come from the embarrassment of Dodgson’s changed manner to her as she grew older.”

The exhibition also features portraits of Sir Winston Churchill, Princess Diana, John Lennon and Margaret Thatcher.

The historian will be giving a talk on his new exhibition, book and TV show at the Sheldonian Theatre in Broad Street on Thursday.

Tickets for the event, which starts at 7pm, cost £10. Tickets and the book are £25.

To book tickets go to eventbrite.co.uk

Face of Britain at the National Portrait Gallery runs until January 4 and The Face of Britain: The Nation through its Portraits by Simon Schama is published by Penguin, price £30.