E Nesbit’s most famous family of children are known, simply, as The Five Children. Their adventures are told in FIVE CHILDREN AND IT, THE PHOENIX AND THE CARPET and THE STORY OF THE AMULET. In the first volume, the children encounter a Psammead or sandfairy, a bad-tempered, odd-looking little creature from pre-history.

In THE PHOENIX AND THE CARPET the same family becomes involved with the vain phoenix and with the help of a magic carpet travel the world. But the carpet has been repaired and the rewoven section is not magic so whoever sits on that part travels nowhere.

In THE STORY OF THE AMULET the device is a time machine in the shape of an Egyptian amulet whose other half is lost in the past. It becomes a gate through which they can visit the past or the future: Egypt of the Pharaohs, Babylon - whose dotty queen comes back to London with them and tries to get her personal belongings out of the British Museum - Caesar’s Britain.

In THE ENCHANTED CASTLE four children encounter magic in the gardens of a great deserted house. Statues of dinosaurs come alive in the moonlight and things go inexplicably wrong. The children decide to put on a play and create an audience out of old clothes, pillows, brooms and umbrellas. They come alive and are most disagreeable.

THE HOUSE OF ARDEN and HARDING’S LUCK tell similar stories from different points of view. Richard Harding, a crippled boy, manages to go into the past where he is Sir Richard Harding in the age of Henry VIII and not lame. In THE HOUSE OF ARDEN a contemporary boy, Edred, must be tested before he can become Lord Arden and restore the family fortunes. He meets the Mouldiwarp (a mole who appears on the family coat-of-arms) who can be summoned only by poetry freshly composed in his honour.