BACK ON TRACK
Having boarded at Keighley and watched the bucolic Yorkshire countryside roll by, Total Film steps off the vintage Keighley & Worth Valley Railway train onto the picturesque platform of Oakworth Station in a billow of coal smoke. Just as Jenny Agutter did in 1970 as Edwardian teen Bobbie Waterbury, who – along with her two siblings and mother – had escaped London scandal (was Daddy a spy?) for charming adventures ‘Up North’.
Based on E. Nesbit’s cosy book, Lionel Jeffries’ film made a star of then-17-year-old Agutter and began a lifelong connection for her with both the material and the location. Agutter, now 69, has become a de facto custodian of the tale, revisiting Oakworth for celebrations and appearing in a 2000 TV remake of the original, this time playing Mother. Now, on this gloriously sunny day in mid-June 2021, she’s on location again, stepping back into Bobbie’s sturdy shoes, and climbing the steep cobbled hill from the station to Haworth on the moor above. She’s filming a scene in which a
