As well as writing, she became involved in local life around the village of Beckford, where she and her family lived, organizing children's parties, and serving as a magistrate.

I’d like to be able to describe them to you, but they aren’t really like anything you’ll every have seen and you need to read the book to understand them.Luckily, Samantha discovers a furry, blue-eyed creature living in the cellar: a bogwoppit, once believed to be extinct. The book suffers from what most of the other reviewers have said - they (like me) read it when they were young and assumed their kids would like it too now. Ursula Moray Williams (19 April 1911 – 17 October 2006) was an English children’s author of nearly 70 books for children.

Orphan Samantha is sent to live with her aunt, Lady Clandorris, who lives in a thoroughly dilapidated mansion mirroring her own unloved and gloomy life.Shirley Hughes has created some beautiful illustrations to accompany the text which really enhances the story, and I loved repeatedly reading this tale of an ordinary girl who has an extraordinary adventure and ends up with everything she ever wanted.

He was quite prepared to believe that the Bogwoppit existed, but not that people behaved as they did throughout the book. Many people will know Ursula Moray Williams for her more famous books, Gobbolino the Witch’s Catand The Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse, both of which I loved, but my favourite of her books was always Bogwoppit.

You didnt have to make excuses for her or pity her like other unwanted children in other stories of this type. When Aunt Lily marries the lodger and goes to America, orphaned Samantha is packed off to her Aunt Daisy, who lives in a grand house at the Park.

It is, she discovers, a bogwoppit, an animal assumed extinct, and one of many that come up through the drains from the outside pond.En masse, they are quite annoying, but The-One-and-Only-Bogwoppit-in-the-World is different and becomes the star of the show.