On the Way Home Award-winning author by Jill Murphy (author)

Jill Murphy was born in London in 1949. From a very early age she was drawing and writing stories. “My earliest memory (my mum tells me I was two), is sitting on the kitchen floor surrounded by sheets of drawings.” By the age of six she was stapling her own little storybooks together.

Jill went to a strict convent, and left at sixteen to attend both Chelsea and Croydon art schools. At only eighteen she finished her first novel, The Worst Witch, which was based heavily on her own experiences at the convent school. Three big London publishers turned it down so Jill put it in a drawer and went off to work in a children’s home and as a nanny. Read more