List of The Worst Witch characters
Mildred Hubble is the titular character of "The Worst Witch" series. Unlike the other girls at Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches, she doesn't come from a regular witch family, but was given a scholarship which greatly impressed Miss Cackle. She is best friends with Maud Spellbody and Enid Nightshade. In "The Worst Witch", although inadvertently ruining a broomstick formation flying display when she was given a sabotaged broomstick, she saves the whole academy from Miss Cackle's jealous and rebel-ish identical twin sister Agatha Cackle, who was seeking to turn all the teachers and pupils into frogs. In the nick of time, Mildred turns Agatha and the rest of her fiendish coven into snails.
Jill Murphy
Murphy started to write "The Worst Witch" while still at school, but put the book on hold while she attended Chelsea and Croydon Art Schools. She continued to write it during a year living in a village in Togo, West Africa, and later while working as a nanny back in the UK. After receiving rejection letters from publishers to whom she offered the book (as she recalls, "They said children would be frightened about a school for witches..."), in 1970 when she was 21 she decided to try the new young company Allison and Busby. "They accepted it immediately, and printed 5,000 copies, and I remember wondering how many aunts and uncles I had, and what we would do with the rest," she said in an interview with "The Telegraph". However, the book proved an instant success, selling out within two months of publication. Murphy continued working as a nanny until the publication in 1980 of "The Worst Witch Strikes Again" prompted her to devote herself to writing full-time.
She gave birth to her son Charlie in spring 1990. Her marriage to potter Roger Michell ended in divorce.