Bed-Knob and Broomstick

The Magic Bed-Knob and Bonfires and Broomsticks in one volume.

These are the exploits of the three Wilson children; Miss Price, the apprentice witch; and the flying bed. Mary Norton sets the young holiday visitors in a sleepy Bedfordshire parish, where a sprained ankle reveals their quiet neighbour’s secret studies in riding a garden broom.

The stories follow the children across time and distance, from a coral lagoon swarming with South Sea cannibals to a churchyard in Restoration London.

Seventeenth-century Cripplegate provides a new companion in a timid necromancer whose bungled enchantments prove just as precarious as Miss Price’s own. A tale of a witch-in-training and trouble of the most unforgettable kind.

• Time Travel: A scratched pin mark and a backward twist on the brass knob propel the children into 1666 London instead of the Elizabethan court they intended to visit.
• Magic and Spells: Miss Price keeps a spotless workroom stocked with bats’ wings and dragon’s liver, testing new charms by briefly turning young Paul into a yellow frog.
• Sibling Dynamics: Older siblings Carey and Charles scramble to steer their flying iron bedstead out of police custody.
• Historical Fantasy: In the shadow of the Great Fire, a street necromancer named Emelius Jones relies on herbal simples to survive the seventeenth century.