Author, illustrator created Worst Witch series
JILL MURPHY 1949-2021 Was nanny until second book came out
Jill Murphy, the children’s writer, who has died of cancer aged 72, was the author and illustrator of the phenomenally successful Worst Witch series of stories for younger children, chronicling the misadventures of the kindly Mildred Hubble, an accident-prone trainee witch at Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches who is always botching her spells.
The first instalment was published in 1974 and it took Murphy more than 40 years to write the next seven, completing the series in 2018 with First Prize for the Worst Witch. Her clear, pared-back style and charming illustrations proved a hit with children and their parents, and the books have never been out of print.
The stories of Mildred Hubble’s disastrous magicianship inspired a 40-part ITV series in the late 1990s, starring a young Felicity Jones as Mildred, as well as a series on CBBC (2017-20). In 2019 a musical stage production, The Worst Witch, opened in the West End and won an Olivier Award.
In recent years the fame of Mildred Hubble has been eclipsed by that of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, though critics have often remarked on similarities between the two series, both of which feature young characters who go off to boarding schools to learn potions, spells and broomstick prowess (Quidditch in the Potter series, “broomstick aerobatics” in The Worst Witch).
However, Murphy’s crisp prose generally enabled an action-packed plot to unravel in fewer than 200 pages. And there was no Lord Voldemort to give young children sleepless nights.
Rowling has not acknowledged Murphy’s work as an inspiration and Murphy was generally reluctant to comment, though when pressed by The Daily Telegraph in 2019, she admitted: “It would be nice, I suppose, if people would say thank you. But you have to be gracious.”
Murphy was born in London on July 5, 1949, the daughter of an Irish aircraft engineer and a librarian he met during the war. A gifted but quirky child, she was reading newspapers before she began school and was good at drawing.
She won a place at Ursuline High School, Wimbledon, a Catholic grammar school, but had problems fitting in: “I was a misfit. I had the long dark hair in plaits,
which were always half undone with bits sticking out. My shoelaces flapping behind me. My hat on back to front.”
Her teachers, she recalled, thought her too pleased with herself and, although she was good at writing and drawing, they took pleasure in pointing out her “hopelessness in all other areas of the curriculum and total lack of common sense.”
The school became the model for Miss Cackle’s Academy, while she based her shambolic heroine partly on herself. She was 14 when she wrote the first draft of The Worst Witch in her school rough book, illustrating it with her own drawings. Mildred was “wearing my school uniform, right down to the humiliating clodhopping shoes. But I gave her a pointy hat.”
She left school at 16 and went on to Chelsea and Croydon art schools, followed by Camberwell, but found it no easier to fit in, and was expelled from Camberwell after only six months.
She worked as a cleaner, then in a children’s home and as a nanny, spent time in a village in Togo, West Africa, with her first husband, and received rejection letters from several publishers (“They said children would be frightened about a school for witches...”) before a small imprint named Allison & Busby took on The Worst Witch and printed 5,000 copies: “I remember wondering how many aunts and uncles I had, and what we would do with the rest.”
She need not have worried. Within two months it had sold out. Murphy continued working as a nanny, however, until the publication of The Worst Witch Strikes Again in 1980, when she decided to devote herself to writing full-time.
She wrote and illustrated many other classic books for younger readers including Peace at Last the same year, about poor Mr Bear and his efforts to get a decent night’s sleep; Five Minutes’ Peace (1986), the first in a series of 11 picture books about the Larges, a family of elephants: The Last Noo Noo (1995), about a Monster called Marlan and his love for dummies or “noo-noos”; Dear Hound (2009), about a lost dog; and Meltdown (2016), about a rabbit called Ruby who has a tantrum in a supermarket.
Murphy, who lived in north Cornwall, was diagnosed with breast cancer in the mid-1990s. In 2015 she was told the cancer had returned.
She was married twice. Both marriages were dissolved and she is survived by a son from her second marriage to Roger Michell.
I WAS A MISFIT. I HAD THE LONG DARK HAIR IN PLAITS, WHICH WERE ALWAYS HALF UNDONE WITH BITS STICKING OUT. MY SHOELACES FLAPPING BEHIND ME. MY HAT ON BACK TO FRONT. — JILL MURPHY