HOW THE WATERBURY CHILDREN FIRST FOUND OAKWORTH

Edith A Nesbit’s novel has over the decades become part of literary legend – a story that yearns to be retold to each new generation.

It appears to be set in 1905, with references to the contemporary Russo-Japanese War. The Waterbury family, comprising a mother, daughters Bobbie and Phyllis and son Peter, move by train from London to Three Chimneys, a house near a railway, which may be in the north of England – perhaps Yorkshire, as Edith visited her sister on the North Yorkshire Moors, staying at a house also called Three Chimneys nearby, or maybe in or around London and the Home Counties, where Edith grew up.

The father, who works at the Foreign Office, disappears in mysterious circumstances and a few days later the family moves to a