The Worst Witch

I am 40, so I appreciate that.

So I would say probably The Worst Witch, Mildred for Hubble, would have been the first time that I really cared about characters, that I was excited about getting into bed and reading them.

And there would be, you know, Matilda and those sorts of books.

But I loved reading when I was quite little.

That's

very Jill Murphy's The Worst Witch, which I loved as a kid.

So there you go.

Well done.

But, like, people will still talk about it.

Why don't you talk about The Worst Witch?

Hmm.

Hmm.

Right.

I loved The Worst Witch, as did you.

Yes.

I had, like, cassette tapes of The Worst Witch, so I used, I used to go to sleep listening to The Worst Witch.

So I know the first 20 minutes of it really well.

[laughs]

I am so fascinated by this pivot in the literature.

Let's look at The Worst Witch, by Jill Murphy, which was published in 1974.

To understand how radical The Worst Witch was at the time, you have to remember that prior to this, witches were largely either historical victims or fairy tale villains.

There wasn't much middle ground.

No, not really.

Murphy introduces us to Mildred Hubble, a young girl attending Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches.

Instead of the witch being a threat to society, she is suddenly just a very stressed, deeply failing student.

I know a lot of people might hear magical boarding school and immediately think of Harry Potter, but Jill Murphy was doing this decades earlier, and the stakes in The Worst Witch are so wonderfully, refreshingly low.