Mildred Hubble is a trainee witch at Miss Cackle's Academy and tends to make a mess of it. She can't master the art of riding a broomstick and her spells have a way of going disasterously wrong. Jill Murphy studied at Camberwell Art School and is the author of "Peace at Last" and "Five Minutes Peace". The "Worst Witch" stories reached a large new audience through the 1986 screening of a Hallowe'en film starring Diana Rigg and Tim Curry.