Who is the protagonist of Worst Witch?

Mildred "Millie" Hubble is the protagonist of the series. She is a good-hearted, but bungling young witch-in-training, who never seems to get anything right. She is friends with Maud Spellbody and Enid Nightshade and has a strong rivalry with Ethel Hallow. It is Miss Hardbroom, her potions teacher, who calls her "The Worst Witch".

The Worst Witch

The Worst Witch is a series of children's books written and illustrated by Jill Murphy. The series are primarily boarding school and fantasy stories, with eight books already published. The first one, "The Worst Witch", was published in 1974 by Allison & Busby, and the most recent one, "First Prize for the Worst Witch", was published in 2018 by Puffin Books, the current publisher of all the series. The books have become some of the most successful titles on the Young Puffin paperback list and have sold more than 4 million copies.

In 1986, the first book in the series was made into a television film of the same name. A TV series based on the books aired from 1998 to 2001, and has inspired two spin-offs, "Weirdsister College", aired in 2001, and "The New Worst Witch", aired in 2005. In January 2017, a new series premiered in some markets as a CBBC, ZDF, and Netflix co-production and as of July 2017 it was released internationally on Netflix as a Netflix Original.

The books focus on Mildred Hubble, a young witch who attends Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches, a school of magic. Although well-intentioned, Mildred's clumsy personality leads the girl to disastrous situations, and she is thus considered the worst student in the school. The benevolent headmistress, Miss Cackle, is generally understanding, whereas Mildred's form teacher Miss Hardbroom thinks she just isn't trying hard enough. Mildred's friends include Maud Spellbody, a rotund, sensible girl who is always trying to avoid confusion, and Enid Nightshade, a practical joker who is more likely than Mildred to get them all into trouble. The three girls have a strong rivalry with Ethel Hallow, a high-born, snobbish and vindictive classmate.

Each book covers one term at the school. There are two terms each year: the Winter term, from September to January, and the Summer term, from March to July. In "First Prize for the Worst Witch", the most recent book, Mildred is in the Summer term of her fourth year.
The author Jill Murphy began writing "The Worst Witch" at the age of 15, while still at school, and based many points of the stories on her own school experiences at Ursuline Convent in Wimbledon, England, with Singing becoming Chanting, Chemistry becoming Potions and so on. Recalling how she got the idea for the story, she said: "My two friends and I used to come home in our dark uniforms, looking very scruffy at the end of the day – my dark plaits sprouting tufts, with lost hair ribbons. My Mum used to say 'Look at you all. You look like the three witches!' and it gave me the idea for a witch's school – so that it was exactly like my school, but with a subtle touch of magic. All the characters are based on my school friends (and enemies) and teachers." Murphy concluded the first book at the age of 18, but failed to achieve a publishing deal, causing her to "put it in a drawer" and decide to "concentrate on other things instead." After working as a nanny and in a children’s home, Murphy had a phone call from a small publisher interested in the book. "The Worst Witch" was finally published in 1974, when Murphy was 24.

"The Worst Witch" () was first published in 1974 by Allison & Busby, who took the book on after it had been turned down by three other publishers.

The novel begins with Mildred Hubble and the upcoming traditional assembly where all of the first-years are given their own black cats that they will teach to ride on their broomsticks with them. Unlike the other girls, who receive black kittens, Mildred receives a tabby cat, which she simply calls Tabby. The kitten is unable to sit on a broomstick, so Mildred carries Tabby in her bag. Miss Hardbroom disapproves and Mildred has to stop. Afterwards, another witch called Ethel Hallow teases Mildred about it, and dares her to turn her into a frog. Mildred loses her temper and turns Ethel into a pig instead.

In the next chapter, Mildred and Maud inadvertently make an invisibility potion instead of a laughing potion in their class test.

In the following chapter, the girls are practising for a broomstick display for Halloween. Ethel lends Mildred her spare broom, on which she has secretly put a spell. During the Halloween festival, Mildred's broom starts bucking, causing all the girls to fall from their broomsticks. The Chief Magician denounces the academy, and Mildred is summoned to a meeting with Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom the next morning. Mildred, fearing expulsion, decides to run away with Tabby.

When walking through the forests near the academy, Mildred hears voices through the trees and comes across a group of witches, headed by one who looks like Miss Cackle. After hearing their plot to turn every teacher and student witch in the academy into frogs, Mildred turns the group into snails, packs them into cardboard boxes and takes them back to the academy. At first, Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom refuse to believe her, but when Mildred describes the leader, Miss Cackle realises she sounds like her identical twin sister, Agatha. They turn Agatha and the rest of the group back into humans, Mildred's interview is cancelled, and she is praised as a hero to the rest of the academy.

"The Worst Witch Strikes Again" () was first published in 1980 by Allison & Busby and features a new character, Enid Nightshade.

Mildred Hubble returns to Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches for the Summer Term of her first year. Miss Cackle has trusted Mildred to look after new girl Enid Nightshade and help her settle in. Mildred starts showing Enid around the academy, only to discover that Enid has smuggled a monkey into school with her. During the assembly that follows, Miss Cackle announces her birthday celebration.

During a chanting lesson with Miss Bat after assembly, Enid deliberately sings awkwardly and out of tune, causing Mildred to burst into hysterical laughter. Mildred is sent to Miss Cackle's office. When going up to her room, Mildred checks on Enid's monkey, causing it to escape. Mildred chases it down the stairs and bumps into Miss Hardbroom, who sends her to the library to study.

After spotting the monkey on top of one of the castle towers Mildred jumps onto her broomstick. Miss Hardbroom turns the monkey into its original form, a normal regulation black cat. Enid secretly reveals to Mildred that she turned the cat into a monkey for fun.

On Sports Day, Mildred and Enid become partners. Enid places a spell on Mildred's pole, so in the pole-vaulting contest, Mildred springs high into the air and lands into Miss Hardbroom's study via the window. Moments later, Miss Cackle, Miss Hardbroom, and Miss Drill arrive and Miss Cackle angrily says that if there is any more bother from Mildred that term, she will be expelled.

Determined to avoid expulsion for the rest of the term, Mildred refuses every daring suggestion Enid makes. Enid decides to skip Miss Cackle's boring birthday celebration and hides in a store cupboard, pulling Mildred in with her. Ethel Hallow locks the door behind them.

Inside the cupboard, the two girls find an old broomstick that they use to fly out of a slit-window leading into the assembly hall. As luck has it, Maud is on stage, having been chosen to recite the first years' contribution to the recital. Maud introduces Mildred and Enid as a surprise broomstick display item. The display is a disaster, but Miss Cackle decides it is the thought that counts, and praises them highly. The three girls become friends.

"A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch" () was published in 1982. It features Ethel Hallow's little sister, Sybil Hallow, and her friend Clarice Crow.

Mildred Hubble returns to Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches for her second year, determined to lose her embarrassing reputation as "the worst witch in the school". After Maud Spellbody and Enid Nightshade arrive, the three bump into two first-years (one of whom reminds Mildred very strongly of someone, the other with ginger frizzy hair in bunches). The one who seems familiar bursts into tears and clings onto Mildred when she hears that many of the teachers (including Miss Hardbroom) are quite strict. Mildred also accidentally slips a made-up story about Miss Hardbroom turning a student into a frog when she was just two seconds late for a lesson. To the girl's horror, they also learn that they have Miss Hardbroom for another year.

The next morning, a fire bell rings. Mildred scrambles into her clothes but notices outside her window Miss Hardbroom standing in the playground surrounded by hazy purple smoke. Thinking she is in a state of shock, Mildred tries to douse her in freezing cold water but the bucket slips off her broomstick and lands with a clang on Miss Hardbroom's head. After witnessing the incident, Ethel Hallow confronts Mildred at lunchtime, saying that the girl she told the frog story to was her younger sister, Sybil. After prodding at Mildred, Mildred loses her temper and insults Ethel's family ("All you Hallows are weeds, weeds, weeds!").

After an unfortunate flying lesson, where Tabby makes another terrifying attempt to avoid sitting on the end of the broomstick, Miss Hardbroom sends Mildred to her room to calm down. When sitting in her bed, however, Mildred accidentally falls asleep and does not hear Ethel creeping into her room.
Mildred is awoken by her bedroom door shutting, only to find that everything looks giant-sized, even Tabby. Peeking in the mirror, she finds that somebody has turned her into a frog. When jumping onto her bed, the frog-Mildred notices a tatty handful of weeds on her pillow, no doubt left by Ethel as a reference to her family's insult and why she turned her into the frog.

Panicking, Mildred squeezes under the gap under her bedroom door and hops off to a potions lesson, where everyone has noticed her disappearance. Miss Hardbroom, however, discovers her and puts her in a jar. During the lesson, Mildred manages to escape from the jar and hops over to Ethel's desk, where she drinks an invisibility potion. Taking advantage of her invisibility, the frog-Mildred hops out of the academy and lands in the lily pond on the castle grounds.

There, Mildred meets another frog who also was a human once called Algernon Rowan-Webb. Algernon reveals that he was turned into a frog by a fellow magician after an argument. Algernon also reveals that the one thing he craves is some toast and crumpets with butter.

Promising to return for him, Mildred hops back up to the academy. Maud and Enid instantly recognise her and take her to Ethel, who reluctantly turns her back into a human. Miss Hardbroom comes by and Ethel tells her that she caught Maud, Enid, and Mildred sneaking around the school. Miss Hardbroom is about to give Mildred a punishment when she notices that Mildred's feet are still invisible. Mildred tells her what really happened. Miss Hardbroom tells Mildred and Ethel to report to her office the next day.

In the morning, Miss Hardbroom bans both Mildred and Ethel from attending the Halloween ceremonies – the only chance Mildred would have had to come into contact with a magician who could turn Algernon back into a human. Mildred feels she has no choice but to kidnap somebody who is going to the Halloween festival. She tricks a third-year witch, Griselda Blackwood, into looking under her bed for an imaginary beetle where Mildred ties her up and takes her cat.

Later, Ethel discovers Griselda being held captive in Mildred's room and the two fly off to the festival to turn Mildred in. Mildred gives herself away and barges up to Mr Hellibore and gives him the box that contains Algernon. Mr Hellibore, one of Algernon's fellow magicians at the time of his transformation, turns him back to his human form.

As a last request from Mildred, Mr Hellibore magics up a pot of tea along with some toast and crumpets with butter. The three head off to enjoy the supper.

"The Worst Witch All at Sea" () was published in 1993. It is the only book in the series not set in Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches, but by the sea instead.

Mildred Hubble returns to Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches for the Summer Term of her second year. Instead of the usual black-and-grey-checked dresses, Miss Hardbroom persuaded Miss Cackle to change them to plain black. After crash-landing in a pile of snow and meeting up with her best friends, Maud Spellbody and Enid Nightshade, Ethel Hallow appears and tells Mildred that Miss Cackle wants to see her.

Miss Cackle suggests to Mildred that she replaces Tabby. Last term, a third-year witch, Fenella Feverfew, transferred to Miss Pentangle's Academy several mountaintops away and left behind her sleek black cat, Ebony, since they have owls at Miss Pentangle's instead of black cats. Down in the kitchens, Mildred reluctantly hands over Tabby to Miss Tapioca (to catch mice), who gives her Ebony in return. Mildred is too upset to tell either Maud or Enid about it.
Miss Hardbroom also announces that Mr Rowan-Webb, the frog-magician whom Mildred saved from the lilypond the previous term, has invited all the second-years to spend a week's holiday at his castle, Gloom Castle at Grim Cove.

Unable to bear the thought of a week without Tabby, on the morning before the girls set out for Grim Cove, Mildred sneaks down into the school kitchens, lets Ebony out of his cage and instead hides Tabby inside.

When they reach Gloom Castle, they find that it is falling apart: the armchairs have springs and stuffing sticking out and there are no proper beds (apart from one, which Ethel Hallow soon claims) other than old sleeping-bags, piles of pillows, and what appear to be hospital trolleys. Mildred gets an old sleeping-bag under the window, and manages to divert attention away from Tabby.

Mildred spots a boat attached to a breakwater and decides to hide Tabby in the cabin of the boat. After a wonderful day on the beach, Mildred tries to sneak some kippers to Tabby, but Ethel catches Mildred, who pretends to be looking for some mythical treasure on Cat's Head Rock in front of the cove in the boat on the breakwater. As the two head back up the cliff stairs, they witness Miss Hardbroom flying down to the beach on her broomstick with her own black cat, Morgana. Morgana runs to the boat and feeds on the kippers that were meant for Tabby. Miss Hardbroom spots both Tabby in the cabin and Morgana eating the fish. Stepping on board to investigate, she slips on a kipper, bangs her head and falls unconscious.

Sneaking out to feed Tabby again, Mildred is confronted by Ethel, who snidely tells her that she untied the boat and let it drift out to sea. Mildred manages to get to the boat where she discovers not only Tabby, but the comatose Miss Hardbroom. Minutes after falling onto the boat, they bump into Cat's Head Rock. Mildred ties the boat onto an odd-looking chunk of rock and falls asleep.

When she awakens, she finds that Maud and Enid have discovered them. Mildred tells them that there is something strange about the rock the boat is tied to. They pull at it and find that it is the mythical treasure chest.
When they get back, Miss Hardbroom has revived and her injured head is bandaged. The contents of the treasure chest are used to repair Gloom Castle and Mildred is given Tabby back as a reward.

Mildred enjoys the rest of the holidays, feeling like "the luckiest girl in the world instead of the worst witch in the school".

"The Worst Witch Saves the Day" () was published in 2005. It features Agatha Cackle disguised as new teacher Miss Granite.

Mildred Hubble is returning to Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches on the first day of her third year. After meeting up with her friends, Maud Spellbody and Enid Nightshade, Mildred sees that Maud's hair is curly (she borrowed a hairstyling brush from her aunt) and they also learn that they will have a new form-teacher this year other than Miss Hardbroom.

They see in assembly that their new form-teacher will be Miss Granite (who was hired by Miss Cackle after Miss Gribble failed to show discipline and against Miss Hardbroom's advice). Miss Granite is described as being very strange-looking and having "a huge cloud of orange curls
" and also wearing "enormous purple-tinted glasses and a short cape with a collar turned up so high that you couldn't see much of her face at all". Miss Granite speaks in a very high-pitched, squeaky voice that shocks everyone including Ethel Hallow.

Mildred unravels her pigtails to try out Maud's styling brush. Maud and Enid find her with her hair loose and a chunk of her hair tangled up with the brush in a huge mess. Ethel comes in and volunteers to help. However, the "help" amounts to taking a pair of scissors and chopping off both the styling brush and the messy hair.

Ethel later offers to help Mildred again in her hair predicament. She formulates a potion that she claims will restore Mildred's hair to its rightful length. Mildred applies the potion that night and just when she is dropping off to sleep, her hair starts growing longer and longer by the minute, engulfing the whole school. Miss Hardbroom comes to investigate, states that Mildred is having "a bad hair day", manages to stop the hair growing and cuts it to its rightful length and vapourises the swathes of hair that had engulfed the whole school.

In a flying lesson, Ethel steals Tabby (who has been suffering a nervous breakdown as a result of the hair incident) and hides him on the roof in front of Miss Granite's study's window.

That night, when trying to recover Tabby, Mildred is locked in a cupboard by someone who seems to be Miss Cackle but is actually Miss Cackle's identical twin Agatha Cackle, who sneaked into the school disguised as Miss Granite. Agatha is trying to turn all the teachers and pupils into snails. Mildred manages to turn herself into an ant, sneaks out of the cupboard and goes to Maud's room, where she tries unsuccessfully to wake her. Fortunately, she is able to attract Maud and Enid's attention by using ink-blots to write two notes – "HELP NOT ANT" attracting their attention to her and "FORGOT SPEL" clarifying her dilemma – and Maud and Enid turn her back into a human. Mildred tells them what is going on and, just as Agatha is about to turn Miss Cackle into a snail, Mildred turns her into a snail herself. They also bump into Miss Hardbroom, who had been away.

Miss Hardbroom suggests that Miss Cackle poses as Agatha and invites Agatha's rebellious coven in, whereupon Mildred and the others will turn them all into snails, which happens. As Mildred, Maud, and Enid go back to bed they say they want Miss Hardbroom as form-teacher. She suddenly appears in front of them and is friendly for a brief moment before strictly telling them to get back to bed with no candles on.

"The Worst Witch to the Rescue" () was published in 2007 and features Ethel Hallow's only friend, Drusilla Paddock, in a largely increased role since her brief cameo in "The Worst Witch All at Sea".

Ethel Hallow is returning to Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches for the Summer Term of her third year. Miss Hardbroom had previously set them a holiday project, but Ethel is doing exactly what Miss Hardbroom told them not to do: trying to think up a project in five minutes flat on the way back to school. Ethel spots Mildred Hubble crash-landed in a tree and manages to help her steady herself. Mildred explains to Ethel her project: a spell that can make animals talk, though it can only work on animals that fit into 25 centimetres and only lasts for two weeks. When helping Mildred out of the tree, Ethel knocks Mildred's luggage out of the tree. While Mildred tries to get Tabby, who had scampered up the tree, Ethel scoops up Mildred's project folder and art bag and her 30 coloured pencils.
On the way there, Mildred finds her friends Maud Spellbody and Enid Nightshade. When Mildred tells them about Ethel being nice for a change, Enid suggests she may have taken a "niceness course" during the holidays. Maud and Enid become suspicious when they catch Mildred talking to someone or something in her cat basket.

The girls find that their new form mistress is called Miss Mould, who has a "soft and kindly" voice and "short mousy hair parted in the middle and pulled into a ponytail at her neck". She is a great relief from the horrifically strict Miss Hardbroom and the extremely weird Miss Granite whom they had had the previous term. Mildred sits next to Drusilla Paddock, who swaps places with Ethel after Miss Mould tells Ethel her coils are too short. Minutes later, a maraca-like noise echoes through the classroom. Mildred finds that her coils have turned into five rattlesnakes. Miss Mould gets the whole class outside while Ethel stays inside and evaporates the rattlesnakes. Just then, Miss Hardbroom appears and Miss Mould explains what happened. Miss Hardbroom sends Mildred to her room and bans her from art lessons for the rest of the term. Mildred runs to her room where she figures out it must have been Ethel who turned her pot and coils into the snakes out of jealousy.
The next day, in a lesson with Miss Hardbroom, the girls are presenting their projects to the class. Ethel goes first but her project is the same as Mildred's. Mildred shouts to Miss Hardbroom that Ethel had stolen her project. Miss Hardbroom opens Mildred's project folder but finds only lots of sheets of paper with smiley faces drawn on them in different colours. Miss Hardbroom "transfers" Mildred to her room.

Later, Mildred finds that the creature inside her cat basket, a tortoise called Speedy whom she had used her spell on, can still speak. She renames him Einstein and Einstein tells her that he overheard her conversation with Ethel inside the tree. After Mildred runs to tell Maud and Enid the good news, Mildred accidentally leaves her bedroom door open and Einstein escapes. While plodding along the corridor he is discovered by Drusilla Paddock, who takes him to Ethel's room. While Ethel and Drusilla talk, it is revealed that Ethel did indeed take Mildred's project and had also "tried out" a snake spell on Mildred's pot and coils in art. Einstein overhears everything.

When they are taking Einstein back to Mildred, Ethel eavesdrops on what Mildred is telling Maud and Enid. After discovering that Einstein can still speak and had overheard the conversation between Ethel and Mildred about the project, and that Einstein only has one more day before the spell wears off and he becomes mute forever, Ethel orders Drusilla to hide Einstein in the hollow pine tree outside the school gates. Einstein is put into a cardboard box that also contains a small green frog called Cyril, the animal whom Ethel had used in her demonstration. Cyril escapes and hops to Mildred's room. Cyril tells Mildred that Drusilla hid Einstein in the hollow pine tree outside the school gates and that he overheard several conversations about stealing projects and turning pots into snakes.

After releasing Cyril into the woods, Mildred gets on her broomstick and, during a violent thunderstorm, finds and rescues Einstein. On landing she is confronted by Miss Hardbroom, who takes Mildred and Einstein inside and, after hearing part of the incidents from Mildred, sets an interview with Mildred and Ethel the next morning.
The next morning, Mildred goes to Miss Cackle's office where Einstein, resting in Miss Cackle's overflowing in-tray, awakes and tells Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom that he overheard the conversation between Ethel and Mildred in the tree. He also says that he heard Ethel telling Drusilla that she had tried out a snake spell on Mildred's coils and had taken Mildred's project, copied it out in her own writing, and then thrown it in the kitchen bins. Ethel sifts through the rubbish and eventually finds Mildred's tea-stained project. Miss Hardbroom makes Ethel apologise to Mildred in assembly in front of the whole year.

During a broomstick-flying lesson, Mildred reveals to Maud and Enid that Miss Cackle had provided Miss Mould's classroom with a proper kiln and craft room and she also got to keep Einstein as a pet. As the clock strikes midday, Mildred sprints into her room and hears Einstein speak for the last time in his raspy little voice ("I'm glad I belong to you"), before munching on his carrot and going silent forever.

"The Worst Witch and the Wishing Star" (Scholastic UK, ; another(?), ) was released by Scholastic UK on 3 October 2013.

Returning from the holidays in stormy weather Mildred, Maud and Enid arrive to be told by Miss Drill that there will be a talent-displaying competition between Miss Cackle's Academy, Moonridge and Pentangle's school to win a swimming pool as the award for the best talent.

Mildred, much to her disappointment, has been chosen to work lantern monitor along with Drusilla and Ethel. On that first night Maud spots a shooting star and Mildred makes a wish followed by Miss Hardbroom who does the same reluctantly. On the first lantern monitor shift Mildred is given a holdall containing safety objects in it. When she reaches the gates to finish the job Mildred spots a stray dog, who she names Star, she takes him to her bedroom as a secret pet, much to the disapproval of Tabby.

During the weeks that follow Mildred, realising that Star is well behaved and calm on a broomstick, trains him to do various tricks with her. Maud and Enid, who realise Mildred isn't spending much time with them, soon discover about Star and are amazed by the tricks Mildred has taught him. Ethel, suspicious about Mildred hiding something in her holdall, reaches into it to discover Star was hidden in it and the both of them collapse
into the lanterns igniting the costumes Form Five have made for the talent competition.

Miss Hardbroom, furious, sends Ethel and Mildred along with Star on a lead to Miss Cackle's office for what they had done then Maud and Enid explain about Star's tricks on the broom. Miss Cackle accepts the replacing talent and the next day the competition took place with the schools showing their talents. When it's Mildred's turn she amazes the judges with Star's tricks and wins the competition and the swimming pool. When the pupils go back to their school Miss Cackle allows Mildred to keep Star as her broomstick companion as a special privilege. Mildred later explains to Miss Hardbroom that she wished for Star on the shooting star at the beginning of term which doesn't annoy her as she wished on the star for them to win the competition. The story concludes with the teachers celebrating their victory and at the same time Miss Hardbroom's birthday.

"First Prize for the Worst Witch" () was published in 2018.

The book deals with Mildred's graduation at the end of her fourth year. Its writing was delayed when Murphy underwent cancer treatment.

The stories mainly take place within the walls of Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches, a girls-only boarding magic school that is described in the books as a stone castle on top of a mountain, surrounded by pine forest.

The school year is divided into two terms: the Winter term (September–January) and the Summer term (March–July), with a month's holiday between them. Students starts at Cackle's at the age of 12, and finish at the age of 17, for a total of five school years. The students arrive at the start of the term by flying broomsticks, except for the new first years, who walk through walker’s gate as they can’t fly yet. Halfway through the first term, the first years are each presented with a black kitten- Mildred receives a grey-and-black tabby cat as they apparently ran out of purely black cats- which they teach to ride the broomstick. The first book postulates that the cats weren't for any practical purpose except to keep tradition going, and in "Wishing Star", a group of elder witches note that there is no restriction on what animal a witch must have as her flight companion, with cats only being traditional as they are discreet and easy to care for, which leads to Mildred being permitted to fly with her dog, Star, after he shows greater broom aptitude than her cat Tabby. At the end of the first year, each pupil receives a copy of "The Popular Book of Spells", a three-inch thick volume bound in black leather. This was not really to be used, as they already had paperback editions for the classroom, but like the cats, it's another piece of tradition. At the end of the fifth and final year, students sit the exams for the W.H.C. (Witches' Higher Certificate), and most pupils were awarded with the certificate.

The first book says that the school winter uniform is composed of "black gymslips, black stockings, black hob-nailed boots, grey shirts and black-and-grey ties." The first book also postulates that "the only touches of colour [on the uniforms] were the sashes round their gymslips – a different colour for each house, although the houses are not named – and the school badge, which was a black cat sitting on a yellow moon." In the summer term, originally the girls wore grey-and-black checked dresses, but this was changed from "Worst Witch All At Sea" onwards to a simple black dress as Ms Hardbroom felt that the original design was too frivolous.

Mildred "Millie" Hubble is the protagonist of the series. She is a good-hearted, but bungling young witch-in-training, who never seems to get anything right. She is friends with Maud Spellbody and Enid Nightshade and has a strong rivalry with Ethel Hallow. It is Miss Hardbroom, her potions teacher, who calls her "The Worst Witch".

Jill Murphy's illustrations shows that she is tall, with long brown plaits. Some illustrations shows that she frequently fails to tie her bootlaces and the colour ones that her uniform sash is red. According to the author, Mildred's appearance is based on her own appearance as a teenager. She remembers: "Mildred is based on myself when I had plaits so long that I could sit on them!"

Maud Spellbody is Mildred's best friend. She is fiercely loyal to Mildred and assists her on most of her adventures, often against her better judgment. Maud is a decent and considerate person, but grows weary of Mildred's incessant clumsiness and often lectures her on how to improve herself. Ironically, Maud is not a perfect student, as she is also responsible for a laughing potion going wrong, as she along with Mildred had no idea how to make one. "The Worst Witch All at Sea" reveals her last name to be Spellbody, rather than "Moonshine", which is what the ITV series dubbed her.

The author's illustrations shows that she is a short, plump girl with wide glasses who always wears her hair in bunches. The colour illustrations reveal that she is blonde and her uniform sash is yellow. According to the author, Maud is based on her best friend as a teenager, a girl called Elizabeth.

Ethel Hallow is Mildred's acid-tongued rival. She does very well in class, comes from a prominent witch family, and gives the impression of being a model student. However, she is spoiled, snobbish and vindictive although able to turn on the charm and act sweet and innocent when the teachers are near, playing the role of a victim with Mildred as the bully. Up until "The Worst Witch to the Rescue", she is Miss Hardbroom's favourite student; however, in the same book, she is exposed as a cheat and a liar, and thus has to watch her step lest she incur her teacher's wrath.

The book illustrations shows that she is a tall, skinny and sharp-faced young girl. Her hair is mousy brown and her uniform sash is purple.

In the first book of the series, it is revealed without explanation that Ethel and Mildred were enemies prior to the story. Ethel takes pleasure in taunting Mildred about her inability to train her cat into riding a broomstick, and Mildred responds by turning her into a pig. From then on Mildred and Ethel resent each other, and Ethel vows to get Mildred expelled. So far she has been unsuccessful. In the first five books she appears to have no friends, although her young sister, Sybil, makes an appearance in "A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch". A friend of Ethel's, Drusilla, makes a brief appearance in "The Worst Witch All at Sea" and later plays a bigger part in "The Worst Witch to the Rescue", where she hides Mildred's tortoise up a tree. Ethel is Mildred's arch-enemy.

Another of Mildred's closest friends. She makes her debut in "The Worst Witch Strikes Again" after she is transferred to Miss Cackle's Academy and Mildred is assigned to look after her, to the irritation of Miss Hardbroom. At first Mildred thinks Enid will simply be a nuisance and a pain, but she turns out to be a wild practical joker. Her attempts to make Mildred like her only result in Mildred getting into trouble, for example, turning her cat into a monkey and enchanting a vaulting pole which catapults Mildred into the air and into Miss Hardbroom's study.

Enid is tall, well-built and rather muscular for a girl. She has large limbs and fair hair, usually in one long plait. In the TV series she is small and waiflike with dark hair. She takes an instant liking to Mildred and hopes to become her friend, implying that she is not a judgmental girl. Overall she is friendly and kind-hearted, but sometimes oversteps the mark in her attempt to befriend and help people, and being nice. Aside from Mildred herself, Enid is considered the second worst witch in the Academy, as she too is hopeless when it comes to broomstick riding and magic.

Miss Hardbroom is the fearsome deputy headmistress of Miss Cackle's Academy and the clear power behind the throne. She is Mildred's form mistress in first form and through various combinations of events continues to be her form mistress throughout the series. Tall, bony and sour-faced, she strikes fear into the pupils' hearts. "HB", as the girls refer to her, seems to have a particular resentment of Mildred. Miss Hardbroom frequently praises and rewards Ethel Hallow, and frequently rebukes Mildred in front of the other students. It is Miss Hardbroom who gives Mildred the title of "the worst witch in the school".

In the later books Miss Hardbroom's humanity comes through on occasion, in incidents such as her accident in "The Worst Witch All at Sea", the restoring of Mildred's hair to its rightful length in "The Worst Witch Saves the Day", and her admitting of her error of judgment at the end of "The Worst Witch to the Rescue".

Miss Hardbroom usually has her hair tied up in a tight bun which makes her face look really long.
Miss Hardbroom is very strict on all of the girls except Ethel Hallow, the teachers' pet.

Amelia Cackle (Ada Cackle in the 2017 TV series) is the kind-hearted headmistress of the Academy. Plump and pleasant, Miss Cackle is more lenient towards Mildred when she is in trouble, and rather than intimidate the girl as Miss Hardbroom does, Miss Cackle gives long, sorrowful lectures which causes Mildred to feel guilty for the trouble she is in. Her birthday is celebrated at her beloved Academy, and her students believe it to be the most boring event of the year. Despite her kind heart, Miss Cackle can be intimidating when she wants to, and has occasionally broken into fits of rage at Mildred, most notably both when Mildred humiliated the reputation of the Academy by ruining a broomstick display to honour the Wizards' Council (Ethel had cursed Mildred to ensure she would make a fool of herself), and after she incorrectly believed Mildred was cheating at the school sport's day, after Enid cast an improper spell upon Mildred to make sure she won the pole-vaulting competition. However, these moments of anger are few and short-lived.

Miss Cackle has an evil twin sister named Agatha Cackle, who is bitterly jealous of her position of authority at the Academy. In the first of the series, Agatha and her coven of rebellious witches plotted to overthrow Miss Cackle and turn her, the staff, and students into frogs as they slept. Mildred caught them as they brewed their invisibility potion, by turning them into snails and taking them to the school to show Miss Cackle. Ashamed that her own sister would break the Witches' Code, she ordered Agatha to accept defeat and live the code like all decent witches. Agatha reluctantly co-operated. She tries to take over again at the end of series 1, by pretending to be Miss Cackle and dragging Mildred out of the classroom by her ear.

The "best friend" of Ethel Hallow, with whom she is often paired up. Drusilla appears only briefly in "The Worst Witch All at Sea", but her role in the TV series and in the later books increases greatly. Drusilla is a horrible, vindictive bully, but lacks the acid-tongued spite of Ethel, and seems to be in great awe of her. Their "friendship" seems to be more of an alliance or a form of servitude: Ethel and Drusilla are not true friends, they have stuck beside each other because nobody else can bear to be around them. Drusilla seems to have no will of her own. Drusilla does everything Ethel orders her to, and in one book ("The Worst Witch to the Rescue") she steals Mildred's beloved pet tortoise and hides it in a tree. In the TV series, she and Ethel briefly end their friendship when Drusilla sides with Mildred and her friends. They make up at the end of the episode though.

In 1986, the first book in the series was converted to a made-for-television film on ITV starring Fairuza Balk, Tim Curry, Diana Rigg, and Charlotte Rae. Though a British film, it also aired in the USA on HBO. The film followed the plot of the first book of the series, portraying the incidents of Mildred turning herself invisible and turning Ethel into a pig, Miss Cackle's evil twin sister Agatha plotting to take over the school, and the Grand Wizard viewing the Halloween Broomstick formation (sabotaged by Ethel's faulty broom she lent to Mildred). It was shot at St. Michael's College in Tenbury Wells. This holiday special later aired on the Disney Channel every year for Halloween until the late 1990s. Its opening song, "Growing Up Isn't Easy", was sung by Bonnie Langford; its music was composed by Charles Strouse and its lyrics were written by Don Black. Their other musical number was "Anything Can Happen on Halloween", sung by Tim Curry. Denis King composed its incidental music score. He also wrote the song "My Little School".

"The Worst Witch", a TV series based on the books, starring Georgina Sherrington and Felicity Jones as Mildred Hubble and Ethel Hallow respectively, was broadcast from 1998 to 2001. It was shot in Montreal, London and Cardiff. The series is mostly shot in studio in London, with some episodes filmed in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The exteriors of Cackle's Academy used Castell Coch, a castle located near Cardiff. The courtyard was filmed at Loseley Park, near Guildford. Inside the school (Great Hall, classrooms etc.) was filmed at Twickenham Studios.

"The Worst Witch" is a new adaption of the books by the BBC, airing in 2017 on CBBC.

When it was no longer realistic that Mildred would still be at school, the series relocated her to a magical university in Cambridge and was retitled "Weirdsister College: The Further Adventures of the Worst Witch," and saw the return of Felicity Jones as a reinvented Ethel Hallow.

In 2004, a new series based on the 1998 series was made, entitled "The New Worst Witch". It centred on the adventures of Mildred's equally bungling cousin, Henrietta "Hettie" Hubble, played by Alice Connor, also set at Cackle's Academy.

The series stars Georgina Sherrington and Felicity Jones (as Mildred Hubble and Ethel Hallow respectively), and was broadcast from 1998 to 2001 on ITV, and later on HBO. The series also stars veteran British actress Una Stubbs as the eccentric chanting teacher, Miss Bat. Felicity Jones was replaced by Katy Allen after the first series, it was explained away as a magical makeover (a "witch-over"). New characters were also added, such as Frank Blossom (the school's caretaker), Miss Crotchet, the music teacher in the third series who replaced Miss Bat and two students from ethnic minorities – Ruby Cherrytree and Jadu Wali. New recurring characters included Merlin Langstaff, a wizard apprentice who befriended Mildred, his two mean-spirited acquaintances – Barry "Baz" Dragonsbane and Gary "Gaz" Grailquest, Charlie, Frank Blossom's nephew who really wanted to be a wizard, Mrs. Cosie, the nervous owner of the nearby tearoom and Mistress Hecketty Broomhead, the evil school inspector who later became a brief headmistress. Also as a character who appears more than once is Egbert Hellibore, chief wizard and headmaster of Camelot Castle, where Merlin, Charlie, Baz and Gaz live. The first series dramatised "The Worst Witch" and "The Worst Witch Strikes Again", and the second series dramatised "A Bad Spell For The Worst Witch" and "The Worst Witch All At Sea". Both of these two series also contained original stories. The third and final series continued with purely original material.

The Worst Witch (1998 TV series)

The Worst Witch is a British-Canadian ITV television series about a group of young witches at a school for magic. The series stars Georgina Sherrington and Felicity Jones, and is based on "The Worst Witch" books by Jill Murphy (published from 1974 onwards). It aired for a total of 40 episodes spread over three series between 1998 and 2001, before being followed by "Weirdsister College." Most episodes revolved around the school, following the adventures of Mildred and her friends. The series was later followed by "The New Worst Witch", which ran for two series and chronicled the experiences of Mildred's younger cousin Hettie as she attended the school.

On 2 November 2014, it was announced that a new series was in development with the BBC.

In the United Kingdom series 1 was released on VHS on six videocassette tapes in 2000. "The Best of" was released on DVD in 2002 and included the episodes: "Battle of the Broomsticks", "A Pig in a Poke", "Old Hats and New Brooms", "It's a Frog's Life", "The Witchy Hour", "Unfairground", and "The Uninvited".

In the United States series 1 and 2 were released on DVD in 2004.

In Australia series 1–3 of "The Worst Witch" were released onto DVD as was "Weirdsister College", and both series of "The New Worst Witch" were released in 2007. Series one and two of "The Worst Witch" were released as one boxset, containing four discs which play on most DVD players (including the United Kingdom), as well as Series three and "Weirdsister College" on another boxset.

In 1999, the series was nominated by the Royal Television Society for Best Children's Drama.

In 2000, Georgina Sherrington won the Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a TV Comedy Series – Leading Young Actress.

Mildred Hubble is the titular character of "The Worst Witch" series. Unlike the other girls at Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches, she doesn't come from a regular witch family, but was given a scholarship which greatly impressed Miss Cackle. She is best friends with Maud Spellbody and Enid Nightshade. In "The Worst Witch", although inadvertently ruining a broomstick formation flying display when she was given a sabotaged broomstick, she saves the whole academy from Miss Cackle's jealous and rebel-ish identical twin sister Agatha Cackle, who was seeking to turn all the teachers and pupils into frogs. In the nick of time, Mildred turns Agatha and the rest of her fiendish coven into snails.

List of The Worst Witch characters

This is a list of characters in "The Worst Witch", a series of children's books written and illustrated by Jill Murphy.

In "The Worst Witch Strikes Again" Miss Cackle trusts her to look after the new girl, Enid Nightshade, much to the chagrin of both Maud and Miss Hardbroom.

In "A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch" Mildred is turned into a frog by Ethel Hallow where she discovers a frog-magician Algernon Rowan-Webb and manages to have him turned back into a human.

In "The Worst Witch All at Sea" she sneakily brings Tabby, her bumbling tabby cat along to Grim Cove with her, instead of her new, ordinary black cat Ebony.

In "The Worst Witch Saves the Day" she once again saves the academy from the ruthless Agatha Cackle (who sneaked into the school disguised as a new teacher Miss Granite, with a high-pitched, squeaky voice, a huge cloud of orange curls, and an extremely bizarre personality) who tried to turn the whole academy into snails.

In "The Worst Witch to the Rescue" her project is stolen by the ruthless Ethel Hallow who also gets her banned from art lessons with Miss Mould after Ethel turned her clay pot into five rattlesnakes. In the same book, Mildred also pulls off a daring rescue of rescuing her talking pet tortoise from a tall pine tree after Drusilla Paddock hid him there under Ethel's orders, and is granted permission to keep the tortoise once he returns to normal.

In "The Worst Witch and the Wishing Star", as she starts fourth year, Mildred is promoted to Lantern Monitor of the school. When she makes an idle wish on a shooting star, she finds herself with an unexpected new pet in the form of a dog, Star, who displays a surprising aptitude for doing tricks on the broomstick. Although there is some objection to Star's presence, after he and Mildred help Cackle's win a competition among three different schools to earn money for a new swimming-pool (albeit after Star accidentally ruined their original plans for a broomstick ballet display), Mildred is granted special permission for Star to be her broomstick companion instead of Tabby.

Despite being clumsy and bumbling, Mildred's intentions are good and she is well-meaning, despite almost getting expelled in "The Worst Witch Strikes Again". Although she has trouble training her cat, Tabby- who is grey with black stripes rather than the required black as they 'ran out of black ones' when handing out cats-, Mildred is nevertheless very fond of him, enjoying cuddling up to him in bed, and even risking expulsion to take him with her on holiday after she is forced to give him up in "The Worst Witch All at Sea", and is upset when they suggest that her new dog Star replace Tabby as her broomstick companion until Miss Cackle clarifies that they intend for Tabby to remain as her general pet. She also has three bats in her room, which she has named Winky, Blinky and Nod in the series; by the fourth book in the series, the number of bats has grown to eight.

Mildred is tall and thin and has long, waist-length, black hair which she wears in two messy pigtails, whereas in "The Worst Witch Saves the Day", Mildred has what Miss Hardbroom calls "a bad hair day", after borrowing Maud's styling brush and getting her hair tangled in it. Ethel chops off the styling brush but then cuts off all of Mildred's hair to hide it. In a false attempt at kindness, Ethel gave Mildred a hair-growth potion which, unfortunately, makes Mildred's hair grow so long and so fast that it practically engulfs the whole school.

In the original 1998 TV series, Mildred was portrayed by Georgina Sherrington. In the 2017 remake, Mildred is portrayed by Bella Ramsey (although in the episode "The Best Teacher", Mildred is portrayed by Rachel Bell when she is temporarily aged into an older woman by what was meant to be a wisdom spell). Both TV adaptations establish that Mildred is the 'worst witch' because she is the first student at Cackle's to originate from a non-magical background; the 1998 version has her receive a scholarship for an imaginative piece of creative writing and the 2017 version has her learn about Cackle's and magic because she helped Maud get to the school on her first day after Maud crashed into her balcony. It is revealed in the season two finale of the 2017 series that actually Mildred's ancestors were magic, but her great-grandmother thirteen generations back sacrificed twelve generations of magic to reignite a founding stone.

Maud Spellbody is first introduced as Mildred's best friend. She breaks off her friendship with Mildred in "The Worst Witch Strikes Again" after growing jealous of Mildred's apparent friendship with the new girl, Enid Nightshade. She later reverts her friendship to Mildred after Ethel locks them in a store cupboard and makes friends with Enid. She is short and chubby with glasses and hair worn in bunches (in A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch she wore pigtails and in "The Worst Witch Saves the Day" she has curly bunches instead of straight ones). She is fiercely loyal to Mildred and Enid and has stood up to Ethel many times, most notably in "The Worst Witch All at Sea" where she reprimands Ethel about eavesdropping on a conversation between her and Enid about Mildred acting strangely.

There is also some inconsistency regarding Maud's surname. The 1998 TV series gave her surname as "Moonshine", but it is never referred to as this in the books; in fact Miss Hardbroom scathingly addresses her as Maud "Spellbody" in "The Worst Witch All at Sea". The 1980s Halloween television movie gave her surname as "Warlock". Later books, including "Fun with the Worst Witch" (2014) gave her surname as 'Spellbody' however.

In The Worst Witch (TV series) Maud was played by Emma Brown. Her chubbiness is dropped but her small stature, bunches, glasses, and loyalty towards her friends remain intact. She has also sprung to Mildred's defense several times, such as in the episode "Learning the Hard Way" where she comments to Miss Hardbroom that Mildred would never have any confidence if she kept shouting at her. It was the 2017 TV series that popularized Maud's surname as the most commonly known Spellbody. Maud was played by Danielle Bachelor in the 80's Halloween movie.

In the 2017 CBBC version of The Worst Witch, Megan Hughes plays Maud in Series 2

Enid Nightshade is Mildred's second best friend who is introduced in "The Worst Witch Strikes Again" where she has hair "the colour of milky tea" wearing it in a thick plait and having large limbs. Mildred is assigned to look after her by Miss Cackle. Enid at first appears to be dull and boring but turns out to be a wild practical joker/prankster who is more likely to get the three into trouble than Mildred is. She unintentionally causes trouble for Mildred throughout the novel, even to the point where Miss Cackle threatens to expel Mildred if there is any more bother from her. Nevertheless, Enid is just as loyal as Maud is and provides comfort and support to Mildred in the following books of the series. Enid is the second worst witch in the Academy, as both she and Mildred are hapless at broomstick riding and lack the specific requirements to be fully-fledged, efficient witch. In the TV series, Enid was portrayed by Jessica Fox. In the new BBC reboot, Enid was portrayed by newcomer Tamara Smart.
Ethel Hallow is the snobbish, stuck-up, vindictive, and sly rival and enemy of Mildred and her friends. She is favoured by Miss Hardbroom, but appears to have no friends, apart from the rarely seen Drusilla Paddock, who is just as bad as Ethel. Ethel is described as being ""one of those lucky people for whom everything goes right"" which is what caused her to become so snobby. Ethel is tall and thin (just like Mildred) and has mousy-brown hair which she wears in a ponytail with a black hair ribbon. She also has a very spiky nose (pointed out by Maud in "A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch"). Various sources have noted that Ethel's primary weakness as a student is that, which she is able to easily follow the rules and perform new spells after demonstration, she lacks the ability to imagine and improvise when given free rein. This was demonstrated most clearly in "The Worst Witch to the Rescue", when she was the student who performed worst in the art class and had no ideas whatsoever for a summer project to research a spell of the student's choice as she lacked a framework for her to start studying in, in contrast to Mildred who not only performed best in art but had even created a completely new spell for the project.Because of her nasty ways, Ethel is sometimes seen as a bully. Yet her actions are instrumental in setting up the climax of nearly every novel.
In "The Worst Witch" the jinx she puts on the broomstick results in Mildred running away into the woods rather than face Miss Cackle. If Mildred hadn't run away she wouldn't have spotted Agatha Cackle and her coven.
In "The Worst Witch Strikes Again", if she hadn't locked Mildred and Enid in the store cupboard they would never have flown into the Great Hall to do a performance and improve Maud's speech.
In "A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch", if Ethel hadn't turned Mildred into a frog, Mildred wouldn't have discovered Algernon Rowan-Webb and he would have remained a frog for the rest of his life.
In "The Worst Witch All at Sea", if she hadn't set the boat adrift, the legendary treasure chest on Cat's Head Rock wouldn't have been discovered.
In "The Worst Witch Saves the Day", if Ethel hadn't left Tabby on the roof then Miss Granite wouldn't have picked him up and Mildred wouldn't have found out Miss Granite was actually Agatha Cackle in disguise.
While she is a straightforward bully in "The Worst Witch to the Rescue", where the main threat is Ethel stealing Mildred's summer project to pass off as her own, Ethel returns to her traditional role of unwittingly provoking success in "The Worst Witch and the Wishing Star", where her attempts to expose Mildred's new dog Star result in Mildred being granted permission to use Star as her broom companion rather than Tabby after she and Star win an inter-school competition.

In the 1998 ITV series, Ethel is played by Felicity Jones in the first series and Katie Allen in the second and third series. Jones later reprised her role in "Weirdsister College". The excuse for the change of actress, as explained in the first episode of the second series "Old Hats and New Brooms", was Ethel having a makeover (or a "witch-over" in their case) during the holidays.

In the 2017 CBBC series, Ethel is portrayed by newcomer Jenny Richardson. This version of Ethel is still intelligent, but is particularly driven to 'prove' herself as her elder sister Esmerelda is a third-year at Cackle's who is generally seen as the school's best student. Her vendetta against Mildred begins in the selection day tests, when Ethel's attempt to prove herself by creating a potion that would turn her into a dragon is inadvertently sabotaged by Mildred; Mildred'stole' part of a key ingredient from Ethel's potion because she needed it for her own levitation spell, with the result that Ethel's spell turned her instead into a worm.

Miss Constance Hardbroom is the terrifying and extremely strict form-mistress of Mildred, Maud, Enid, Ethel, and Drusilla. She is tall, thin and bony with waist-length black hair which she keeps ""scragged into such a tight knot that her forehead looked quite stretched"". Miss Hardbroom favours Ethel Hallow but has the complete opposite attitude to Mildred Hubble. Miss Hardbroom is even terrifying enough to reduce any pupil to a gibbering heap with one word. Despite seeming cruel, Miss Hardbroom's soft side does come through on occasions, such as her ""brief flicker of friendliness"" at the end of "The Worst Witch Saves the Day" and her admitting her error of judgement in "The Worst Witch to the Rescue" after it is revealed that Ethel stole Mildred's summer project for herself, Maud noting in "The Worst Witch and the Wishing Star" that Miss Hardbroom's dislike of cheats means that Ethel will be under close watch.

In the 1986 film Miss Hardbroom is portrayed by Diana Rigg. In the 1998 TV series she is portrayed by Kate Duchêne, and in "The New Worst Witch" by Caroline O'Neill. In the 2017 CBBC series she is called Miss Hecate Hardbroom and played by Raquel Cassidy.

Mildred Hubble is a major character in "The Worst Witch" children's book series by Jill Murphy. She is the protagonist in all the books. She is friends with Maud Spellbody and Enid Nightshade and has a strong rivalry with Ethel Hallow and Drusilla Paddock.

Mildred Hubble

In "The Worst Witch" Mildred is in the Winter Term of her first year. She is shown to be tall and thin with long, black hair which she wears in pigtails. On the day of the cat ceremony, Mildred is given a tabby cat instead of a normal black cat which fails to sit on her broomstick without even trying to hold on. This prompts the form sneak and goody-two-shoes teacher's pet Ethel Hallow to taunt her about it. After losing her temper, Mildred turns Ethel into a pig (though she did it under threats of a frog transformation) whereupon Miss Hardbroom materializes in the courtyard and tells Mildred to take Ethel to the school library and reverse the spell. From then on, Mildred and Ethel become deadly enemies. In revenge for the pig transformation, Ethel curses a broom she was lending to Mildred for the Halloween celebrations at an abandoned castle. This results in the broom turning bucking bronco-like and nearly throwing Mildred off. After furiously being set an interview with Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom, Mildred runs away where she comes across another witch that "looks" like Miss Cackle but is actually Miss Cackle's evil identical twin sister Agatha Cackle who is jealously trying to throw a mutiny against her sister and take over the academy. In the nick of time, Mildred turns Agatha and her malevolent coven into snails and takes them back to the school, whereupon her interview is cancelled and she is made a heroine.

In "The Worst Witch Strikes Again" she is assigned by Miss Cackle to show the new girl, Enid Nightshade, around the school, much to the chagrin and disappointment of both Maud and Miss Hardbroom. Throughout the novel, Enid gets Mildred into trouble without owning up. In A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch she is turned into a frog by Ethel Hallow after telling her younger sister a pretend story about Miss Hardbroom turning a pupil into a frog after being two seconds late for a lesson. This is how she discovers Algernon Rowan-Webb. In "The Worst Witch All at Sea", after being given a normal black cat after Fenella Feverfew transferred to Miss Pentangle's Academy, Mildred disobeys orders and brings Tabby with her to Grim Cove. She also discovers a legendary treasure chest on Cat's Head Rock.

In "The Worst Witch Saves the Day" she once again saves the academy from the evil plots of Agatha Cackle who had sneaked into the school disguised as "Miss Granite". Although Agatha locks Mildred in a cupboard to ensure that she cannot interfere with Agatha's plans, Mildred escapes by turning herself into an ant and manages to warn the rest of the school. In "The Worst Witch to the Rescue" her holiday project, in the form of a spell to make animals talk, is stolen by the treacherous and sneaky Ethel Hallow, who also gets her banned from Miss Mould's art lessons after being falsely accused of turning her pot into five rattlesnakes. However, Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom soon learn that Ethel was lying after Mildred rescues her tortoise from a pine tree after Drusilla Paddock hid him there under Ethel's orders, the tortoise- whom Mildred names 'Einstein'- able to speak after Mildred used him as a test subject for her spell, allowing him to serve as a witness to Ethel's actions.

In "The Worst Witch and the Wishing Star", Mildred's fourth year begins with her being named Lantern Monitor for part of the school, but her life is immediately complicated when a wish on a shooting star apparently leads to her finding a stray dog outside the castle. Despite the complications of his presence, Mildred swiftly becomes attached to the dog, whom she names 'Star', and teaches him to perform some tricks on her broom, but Star's existence is exposed to the rest of the school when Ethel's attempt to find out Mildred's secret results in the destruction of the costumes Form Five were going to use for a broomstick ballet display as part of an upcoming inter-school talent contest. However, Maud and Enid convince Miss Cackle to let Mildred and Star serve as the replacement act, with the resulting display being so successful that not only do they win the talent competition, but Mildred is allowed special dispensation to use Star as her broomstick companion while keeping Tabby as a more general pet.

In the 1986 TV movie, Mildred was played by "Return to Oz" star Fairuza Balk. It aired on both Central Independent Television and HBO.

In the 1998 ITV TV series, Mildred was played by Georgina Sherrington. She was also played by Sherrington in "Weirdsister College". Mildred made a brief appearance at the beginning of the first episode of "The New Worst Witch" as a successful witch escorting her equally clumsy cousin Henrietta "Hettie" Hubble (played by Alice Connor), to Cackle's Academy.

In the 2017 BBC TV series, Mildred is portrayed by Bella Ramsey, who played Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones. This adaptation places great emphasis on the idea that Mildred is the first person in her family to manifest magic, thus attributing most of her problems at school to the fact that she has far more to catch up on compared to classmates who have been schooled in the rules of magic for years. It is revealed in the season two finale that actually Mildred's ancestors were magic, but her great-grandmother thirteen generations back sacrificed twelve generations of magic to reignite a founding stone.


Where is the Klickitat tribe?

The Klickitat (also spelled Klikitat) are a Native American tribe of the Pacific Northwest. Today most Klickitat are enrolled in the federally recognized Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, some are also part of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon.

Klickitat people

A Shahaptian tribe, their eastern neighbors were the Yakama, who speak a closely related language. Their western neighbors were various Salishan and Chinookan tribes. Their name has been perpetuated in Klickitat County, Washington, Klickitat, Washington, Klickitat Street in Portland, Oregon, and the Klickitat River, a tributary of the Columbia River.

The Klickitat were noted for being active and enterprising traders, and served as intermediaries between the coastal tribes and those living east of the Cascade Mountains.

The ethnonym "Klikitat" is said to derive from a Chinookan word meaning "beyond," in reference to the Rocky Mountains. The Klickitat, however, call themselves "Qwû'lh-hwai-pûm" or "χwálχwaypam", meaning "prairie people" (X̣ʷáɬx̣ʷaypam).

The Yakama called them "Xwálxwaypam" or "L'ataxat". Other names for the Klickitat include:

The ancestral lands of the Klickitat were situated north of the Columbia River, at the headwaters of the Cowlitz, Lewis, White Salmon, and Klickitat rivers, in present-day Klickitat and Skamania Counties. They occupied their later base after the Yakama crossed this river. In 1805, the Klickitat were encountered by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Lewis and Clark found them wintering on the Yakima and Klickitat Rivers and estimated their number at about 700.

In the early 1850s, the Klickitat Tribe raided present-day Jackson County, Oregon from the north and settled the area. Modoc, Shasta, Takelma, Latgawas, and Umpqua Indian tribes had already lived within the present boundaries of that county.

Between 1820 and 1830, an epidemic of fever struck the tribes of the Willamette Valley. The Klickitat took advantage of the drop in population in this region and crossed the Columbia River and occupied territory occupied by the Umpqua. This was not permanent, however, as they were pushed back to their original homeland.

The Klickitat War erupted in 1855. The Klickitat capitulated and joined in the Yakima treaty at Camp Stevens on June 9, 1855. They ceded their lands to the United States. Most of them settled upon the Yakama Indian Reservation, a minority on the Grand Ronde Community.

The Klickitats were noted to trade Salmon, Roots, and Berries and to have two chiefs within the tribe that welcomed Lewis and Clark in their
arrival.

Klickitat people

Klickitat County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2010 census, the population was 20,318. The county seat and largest city is Goldendale. The county is named after the Klickitat tribe of the Yakama Native Americans.

Klickitat County, Washington

Klickitat County was created out of Walla Walla County on December 20, 1859. Samuel Hill was an early promoter of the area, promoting better roads and building local landmarks such as a war memorial replica of Stonehenge (Maryhill Stonehenge) and a mansion that would become the Maryhill Museum of Art. The Sam Hill Memorial Bridge across the Columbia River is named after him.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of, of which is land and (1.7%) is water.

As of the census of 2000, there were 19,161 people, 7,473 households, and 5,305 families residing in the county. The population density was 10 people per square mile (4/km²). There were 8,633 housing units at an average density of 5 per square mile (2/km²). The racial makeup of the county was 87.56% White, 0.27% Black or African American, 3.47% Native American, 0.73% Asian, 0.21% Pacific Islander, 5.02% from other races, and 2.75% from two or more races. 7.81% of the population were Hispanics or Latinos of any race. 17.7% were of German, 14.0% United States or American, 11.1% English and 9.6% Irish ancestry. 90.3% spoke English and 7.8% Spanish as their first language.

There were 7,473 households out of which 32.30% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 57.70% were married couples living together, 9.10% had a female householder with no husband present, and 29.00% were non-families. 23.80% of all households were made up of individuals and 9.00% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.54 and the average family size was 2.99.

The age distribution was 27.10% under the age of 18, 6.50% from 18 to 24, 25.70% from 25 to 44, 27.00% from 45 to 64, and 13.80% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females there were 99.50 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 98.80 males.

The median income for a household in the county was $34,267, and the median income for a family was $40,414. Males had a median income of $36,067 versus $21,922 for females. The per capita income for the county was $16,502. About 12.60% of families and 17.00% of the population were below the poverty line, including 22.50% of those under age 18 and 15.10% of those age 65 or over.

As of the 2010 United States Census, there were 20,318 people, 8,327 households, and 5,626 families residing in the county. The population density was. There were 9,786 housing units at an average density of. The racial makeup of the county was 87.7% white, 2.4% American Indian, 0.6% Asian, 0.2% black or African American, 0.1% Pacific islander, 5.6% from other races, and 3.3% from two or more races. Those of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 10.7% of the population. In terms of ancestry,

Of the 8,327 households, 27.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 54.5% were married couples living together, 8.5% had a female householder with no husband present, 32.4% were non-families, and 26.4% of all households were made up of individuals. The average household size was 2.42 and the average family size was 2.88. The median age was 45.3 years.

The median income for a household in the county was $37,398 and the median income for a family was $46,012. Males had a median income of $43,588 versus $31,114 for females. The per capita income for the county was $21,553. About 13.7% of families and 19.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 33.9% of those under age 18 and 9.4% of those age 65 or over.
Klickitat is located in Washington's 3rd congressional district, which has a Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+2 and has been represented by Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler since 2011. In state government the county is part of the fourteenth district so is represented by representative Gina McCabe (R) and Norm Johnson (R) in the Washington House of Representatives and Curtis King (R) in the Washington State Senate.

In Presidential elections Klickitat is something of a "swing county." In 1988 Michael Dukakis narrowly won the county with 49.15% of the vote. Richard Nixon (1960, 1972), Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush all won the county twice. In 2008 Democrat Barack Obama won Klickitat County over Republican John McCain by only 21 votes or percentage wise 48.85% to 48.64%. In 2012 Republican candidate Mitt Romney won the county by a greater margin than in the previous election, with 51.74% of the vote compared to President Obamas 44.75%, and Donald Trump doubled Romney’s margin in 2016.


When was Garry Marshall born?

Garry Kent Marshall (November 13, 1934 – July 19, 2016) was an American film director, film producer, screenwriter, and actor, best known for creating "Happy Days" and its various spin-offs, developing Neil Simon's 1965 play "The Odd Couple" for television, and directing "Pretty Woman", "Beaches", "Runaway Bride", "Valentine's Day", "New Year's Eve", "Mother's Day", "The Princess Diaries", and "".

Garry Marshall

Garry Kent Marshall was born in The Bronx, New York on November 13, 1934, the son of Anthony Wallace Marshall (né Masciarelli; 1906–1999), a director of industrial films and later a producer, and Marjorie Irene (née Ward; 1908–1983), a tap dance teacher who ran a tap dance school. He was the brother of actress/director Penny Marshall and Ronny Marshall Hallin, a television producer. His father was of Italian descent, his family having come from San Martino sulla Marrucina, Chieti, Abruzzo, and his mother was of German, English, and Scottish ancestry. His father changed his last name from Masciarelli to Marshall before his son Garry was born. Garry Marshall was baptized Presbyterian and also raised Lutheran for a time.

He attended De Witt Clinton High School and Northwestern University, where he wrote a sports column for "The Daily Northwestern", and is a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity.

Marshall began his career as a joke writer for such comedians as Joey Bishop and Phil Foster and became a writer for "The Tonight Show" with Jack Paar.

In 1961, he moved to Hollywood, where he teamed up with Jerry Belson as a writer for television. The pair worked on "The Dick Van Dyke Show", "The Joey Bishop Show", "The Danny Thomas Show", and "The Lucy Show". Their first television series as creator-producers was "Hey, Landlord", which lasted one season (1966–67). Then they adapted Neil Simon's play "The Odd Couple" for television. On his own, Marshall created "Happy Days", "Laverne and Shirley" (starring his sister Penny), and "Mork & Mindy", which were produced by his associates Thomas L. Miller, Robert L. Boyett, and Edward K. Milkis. He was also a co-creator of "Makin' It", which the three men also produced.

In the early 1980s, he met Héctor Elizondo while playing basketball and became great friends. Elizondo appeared in every film that Marshall directed, beginning with his first feature film "Young Doctors in Love". Elizondo once noted that he is written into all of Marshall's contracts whether he wanted to do the film or not.

In the opening credits of "Exit to Eden" (their eighth film together), Elizondo is credited "As Usual... Hector Elizondo". In 1984, Marshall had a film hit as the writer and director of "The Flamingo Kid".
Marshall wore many hats during this period of his career: most of his hit television series were created and executive produced by him. His first producing assignment came with "Hey, Landlord" in 1966. He stepped up the very next year, producing "The Lucy Show". Then came successes in producing "The Odd Couple", "Laverne and Shirley", "Blansky's Beauties", "Mork & Mindy", "Angie", and "Happy Days". He launched independent productions through his theater (The Falcon in Toluca Lake) and in association with productions launched with talent he was grooming and working with for years.

One such project titled "Four Stars" was directed by Lynda Goodfriend (who portrayed Lori Beth in "Happy Days"), and was based on a play Goodfriend had read when she was studying at the Lee Strasberg Center, which had been written by John Schulte and Kevin Mahoney. It starred Julie Paris (the daughter of Jerry Paris) and Bert Kramer. Schulte later co-wrote with TV veteran writer and producer, Fred Fox, Jr., who penned and produced a number of Marshall's television series, including "Happy Days" and "Laverne and Shirley". Marshall went on to focus on directing feature films, with a series of hits, such as "Beaches", "Pretty Woman", "The Princess Diaries", "Valentine's Day", and "New Year's Eve".

Marshall was also an actor, appearing in "Murphy Brown" and in such films as "Soapdish", "On the Lot", and "Lost in America", and provided a guest-starring voice for "The Simpsons" episodes "Eight Misbehavin'" and "Homer the Father". He also appeared in two episodes of "Happy Days" as a drummer.

His theater credits included "Wrong Turn at Lungfish", which he wrote in collaboration with Lowell Ganz, "The Roast" with Jerry Belson, "Shelves" and "Happy Days: A New Musical" with Paul Williams, which had its premiere at the Falcon Theater in Burbank, California, February 24, 2006. He portrayed the role of "director" on Burbank's "Lights... camera... action!" float in the 2014 Rose Parade. In 2014, Marshall appeared in a guest star role in a February episode in season 11 of "Two and a Half Men".

His son Scott Marshall is a director and his daughter Kathleen Marshall is an actress and producer. In 1997, he co-authored the memoir "Wake Me When It's Funny" with his daughter Lori Marshall.

On the morning of July 19, 2016, Marshall died at a hospital in Burbank, California at the age of 81 due to complications of pneumonia after suffering a stroke.

In 1996, Marshall was awarded the Women in Film Lucy Award in recognition of excellence and innovation in creative works that have enhanced the perception of women through the medium of television. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame for his contributions to the field of television in 1997.

In 2012, he was inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters' Broadcasting Hall of Fame.

Marshall received the Valentine Davies Award (1995) and Laurel Award for TV Writing Achievement (2014) from the Writers Guild of America.

Garry Marshall


Does schizophrenia run in families?

Family studies on schizophrenia were reviewed. That the disorder runs in families did not suggest it was genetically inherited, since cultural transmission occurs from parents to children. Twin and adoption studies were presented as the standard methods to disentangle contributions from genes and the environment. Gottesman used a computer-based method for calculating the odds of becoming schizophrenic based on the many causes. The book examines the problems caused by schizophrenia for relatives of patients and for society at large, larger-scale ones exemplified by the eugenics policies of states such as Nazi Germany. Two final chapters cover molecular biology and neuroanatomy briefly. Newer methods of behavioral genetics being researched at the time of publication, such as linkage analysis which used the likelihood of neighboring genes being inherited together, were not covered.

Irving Gottesman

Irving Isadore Gottesman (December 29, 1930 – June 29, 2016) was an American professor of psychology who devoted most of his career to the study of the genetics of schizophrenia. He wrote 17 books and more than 290 other publications, mostly on schizophrenia and behavioral genetics, and created the first academic program on behavioral genetics in the United States. He won awards such as the Hofheimer Prize for Research, the highest award from the American Psychiatric Association for psychiatric research. Lastly, Gottesman was a professor in the psychology department at the University of Minnesota, where he received his Ph.D.

A native of Ohio, Gottesman studied psychology for his undergraduate and graduate degrees, became a faculty member at various universities, and spent most of his career at the University of Virginia and the University of Minnesota. He is known for researching schizophrenia in identical twins to document the contributions of genetics and the family, social, cultural, and economic environment to the onset, progress, and inter-generational transmission of the disorder. Gottesman has worked with researchers to analyze hospital records and conduct follow-up interviews of twins where one or both were schizophrenic. He has also researched the effects of genetics and the environment on human violence and variations in human intelligence. Gottesman and co-researcher James Shields introduced the word epigenetics—the control of genes by biochemical signals modified by the environment from other parts of the genome—to the field of psychiatric genetics.

Gottesman has written and co-written a series of books which summarize his work. These publications include raw data from various studies, their statistical interpretation, and possible conclusions presented with necessary background material. The books also include first-hand accounts of schizophrenic patients and relatives tending to them, giving an insight into jumbled thoughts, the disorder's primary symptom. Gottesman and Shields have built models to explain the cause, transmission, and progression of the disorder, which is controlled by many genes acting in concert with the environment, with no cause sufficient by itself.

Gottesman was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1930, to Bernard and Virginia Gottesman (née Weitzner), who were Hungarian–Romanian Jewish immigrants. He was educated at Miles Standish Elementary and a public school in Cleveland's Shaker Heights. After leaving school, Gottesman joined the United States Navy, where he was given a scholarship and the rank of midshipman, and was assigned to the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. He first specialized in physics but changed to psychology, receiving his B.S. degree in 1953.

Gottesman did his graduate work at the University of Minnesota, which then patterned its clinical psychology program on the Boulder model, which emphasized research theory and clinical practice. He joined the graduate program in 1956 after three years with the Navy, supported by the Korean War G.I. Bill. He began investigating personality traits in identical and fraternal twins who had filled out the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). His Ph.D. thesis, submitted to "Psychological Monographs", was rejected before a review on the grounds that the nature–nurture issue it addressed had already been settled in favor of nurture. On appeal, the thesis was reviewed and accepted for publication.

Gottesman began his career at Harvard University as a social relations and psychology lecturer. This non-tenure-track position ended after three years. Then he worked with researcher James Shields at the Maudsley–Bethlem hospital complex in London, using its twin registry to analyze traits of identical and fraternal twins at the lab of Eliot Slater, whom Gottesman met in Rome at the Second International Congress on Human Genetics in 1961. After his return to the University of Minnesota in 1966, Gottesman created a program on behavioral genetics, the first in the U.S. In 1972–1973 he received a Guggenheim fellowship to work with K.O. Christiansen in Denmark. In 1980 he left to join the Washington University School of Medicine, then moved to the University of Virginia in 1985, where he started the clinical psychology training program. Gottesman continued vising London and collaborating with Shields, with whom he co-wrote a series of books.After spending 16 years at the University of Virginia, Gottesman retired from an active role after 41 years of research, but continues research part-time in psychology and psychiatry.

From 2011 till his death, Gottesman was a professor with an endowed chair in adult psychiatry and a senior fellow in psychology at the University of Minnesota; a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Academy of Clinical Psychology, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University; a Guggenheim Fellow for 1972–1973 at the University of Copenhagen; an emeritus in psychology with a chair endowment at the University of Virginia; and an honorary fellow at the London Royal College of Psychiatrists. He has advised 35 graduate students, and an annual lecture on behavior and neurogenetics has been established in his name by the University of Virginia. Gottesman was married to Carol Applen, whom he wed on December 23, 1970; they had two sons. Gottesman died June 29, 2016.

Gottesman first studied the genetics of schizophrenia on a large scale using the Maudsley–Bethlem register of twin admissions for 16 years. Later he worked on psychiatric genetics and genomics. In his Twin Cities MMPI study, part of his Ph.D. thesis, Gottesman found high levels of inheritance in the scales related to schizophrenia, depression, anti-social personality disorder, and social introversion. Genes strongly influenced social introversion and aggressive tendencies. This led to further studies on personality traits of identical twins such as the Minnesota Study of Identical Twins Reared Apart.

Analyzing the results of the Maudsley–Bethlem study, Gottesman and Shields devised the multi-element, polygenic causation model for schizophrenia by modeling schizophrenia diagnoses using the recently introduced liability-threshold model. The book that summarized and expanded on the study, "Schizophrenia and Genetics: A Twin Study Vantage Point", argued that schizophrenia is a product of several genes acting together, and introduced the techniques of precise analysis in the field of behavioral genetics.Gottesman and Shields introduced terms such as "reaction ranges/surface", "endophenotype" and "epigenetic puzzle" into the behavioral sciences. The threshold model hypothesized that both genetic and environmental risks combined to produce schizophrenia, and pushed an individual into a diagnosable condition when their influence grew strong enough. The reaction range concept is the idea that the genes and the environment control behavior, but with separate upper and lower limits on the strength of that control in each case, a concept now part of basic psychology. Before the study, the prevailing opinion was that schizophrenia originated from bad parental relationships. The researchers showed identical twins were more likely to either have or not have schizophrenia together, concluding the disorder was the "outcome of a genetically determined developmental predisposition".

The Maudsley–Bethlem study also hypothesized that schizophrenia was caused by a mixture of many small traits working together. These endophenotypes could be used for diagnosis. Endophenotypes have been interpreted as a link between genes and the final behavior, acted on by the environment and chance elements, with biochemical and epigenetic influences changing the genome but not being passed on to children. Molecular-biological studies in genetics have referred to endophenotypes to explain genetic causes of psychopathology. The researchers also examined how schizoids, those with mild, schizophrenia-like personality disorders, were linked to schizophrenics. Gottesman and Shields extended the term to classes of mild psychological disorders in twins and relatives of schizophrenics. The researchers had hypothesized that schizoida in a twin was how a schizophrenia carrier gene, one in a non-schizophrenic still passing on a genetic risk, expressed itself. The twin study did not confirm this.

In the Denmark study, the researchers evaluated the extent to which genes underpin psychopathology. Their twin studies of criminality found that a genetic disposition to poor self-control caused both identical twins to become felons, or to not become felons. They also studied identical twins who were discordant for schizophrenia, where one twin was schizophrenic and the other not, and found children of such twins had equal genetic vulnerability to the disease. A later study in the mid-1980s, resulting in a paper awarded the Kurt Schneider Prize, concluded that children of identical twins were at higher risk than those of fraternal twins, indicating the non-schizophrenic identical twin passed on a latent genetic disposition, even if it had not been expressed through schizoida. The Denmark study introduced the concepts of "unexpressed genotypes"the latent genetic risk, and "epigenetic control"the biochemical regulation of how genes work, into the new field of behavioral genetics.

In a 1989 review of the research on juvenile delinquency and violence, Lisabeth DiLalla and Gottesman found delinquency could be transitory or continuous, and genes contributed more to the continuous type. In 1991 the same authors published a critique of the then-prevalent idea of antisocial behavior being transmitted through generations by child abuse alone in antisocial families. They stated that a review by Cathy Spatz Widom and the studies she cited had missed an element: children maltreated in families might have been targets because their genes might have influenced them into committing antisocial acts and attracting such treatment from parents.

Gottesman was one of the presenters at the 1995 conference at the Aspen Institute in Maryland on how strongly genes controlled a person's leaning toward violence and crime. Gottesman presented results from studies on the influence of genes in criminality, stating that identical twins separated at birth were likely to show similar levels of criminal behavior. This concordance indicated that genes influenced such behavior. He did point out that behavioral patterns were strongly influenced by the environment and not set by genes alone. The conference, funded by the National Institutes of Health, was contentious, with detractors arguing that such studies would lead to minority groups, more likely to be criminals because they had lower social status or were poor, being targeted with gene therapy for violence. Protesters disrupted the conference and swarmed into the auditorium. Gottesman reasserted his belief that scientists should proceed with the research, not waiting for humanity to become ethical enough not to misuse it.

In 1972, Gottesman was called before the United States Senate by senator Walter Mondale to discuss the then 15-point IQ gap separating African Americans and white Americans. Gottesman testified that genes influenced IQ, but only in conjunction with elements such as schooling, money, and nutritious food from childhood onwards. In 2003, he and colleagues published a study showing that heritability was higher for IQ differences within high socioeconomic status (SES) people than among low SES people, i.e., genes influenced differences between children's test scores more among high SES than among low SES children.

Gottesman researched and published on the abuse of genetic research in Nazi Germany, and provided expert testimony in a Chinese human rights case involving schizophrenia in the family. His scholarly books on schizophrenia also highlighted the human costs of the disorder. In "Schizophrenia Genesis: The Origins of Madness", he provided chapters in which patients describe their experiences of the disease, and those of their families. Gottesman emphasized that genetics influences patients' behavior in concert with the family, social, economic, and cultural contexts. Gottesman also highlighted random events as an important "third element" determining behavior and what unfolds as apparent destiny. In his writings, he reflected that the interaction between these elements is known only at the level of probabilities, and not as fixed and precise quantities.

Gottesman authored nine books, all related to schizophrenia and psychiatric genetics.

Gottesman and Shields published "Schizophrenia and Genetics" to document their twin-study research at the Maudsley Hospital in London, the work that in part earned them the Hofheimer Prize for Research, the highest award for psychiatric research from the American Psychiatric Association. The study expanded on an earlier one by Eliot Slater at the same hospital, covering 24 identical and 33 fraternal twins, with at least one from every pair a schizophrenic being treated at the hospital between 1948 and 1964. This study was one of eleven such in the contemporary literature, and the book detailed the methodology and analytic detail differentiating it from the others.

Chapters on methodology comprise a third of the book's core. Identical and fraternal twins were classified using fingerprints and blood groups. Follow-up interviews were recorded to monitor the progress of their patients (the probands) and their twins, some schizophrenic and others not. Two psychological teststhe MMPI and the Object Sorting Test (Goldstein Scheerer Test of Concept Formation)were used to measure mental traits and functioning. Case summaries were prepared by the Scandinavian psychiatrist Erick Essen-Moller, and these were sent, with data on identical-or-fraternal-twin status and diagnosis-of-schizophrenia removed, to six judges from the U.S., U.K. and Japan. The judges independently evaluated whether the patients were schizophrenic.

Results of studies comprise another third of the core of "Schizophrenia and Genetics". The data showed that genes made a person likely to develop schizophrenia under environmental pressures. The study was not designed to find the genes responsible, but the authors hypothesized there would be several acting in tandem.Contextual elements responsible could not be identified, though some, such as an overly protective mother, birth order, natal weight, and social and economic elements were ruled out. Gottesman and Shields found roughly half of identical twins had a shared schizophrenic or non-schizophrenic status, but only one-eleventh of fraternal twins had such a shared diagnosis. MMPI scales coincided among identical twin pairs but not among fraternal twin pairs. The Object Sorting Test showed no useful relations. Those meeker than their twins were more liable to develop schizophrenia where their genes already put them at risk.

The book presents case histories of all the twin-pairs studied and the raw data from the analyses. Its last chapters put the results in the context of existing studies, and presented a new theory and model to explain the causes and continuance of the disorder. The environmental aspects the researchers checked drew on existing literature, and multiple judgments were pooled to both compare and mutually cancel differing criteria for diagnosing schizophrenia. The theory in the book was that many genes work together to dispose a person to the disorder under certain environmental pressures. The model provided no specific therapeutic insight, but was useful as a guideline for further study.

"Schizophrenia: The Epigenetic Puzzle" outlined the approaches, conclusions and models Gottesman used in his study of schizophrenia. He co-wrote the book with James Shields, who died before it was published. The book introduces methods for diagnosing schizophrenia in a research setting, taking into account national differences in how the disorder was defined, debunked myths such as the mother transmitting schizophrenia, and introduced the concepts of the threshold model and the reaction range.

The book provided a tutorial on genetics to make the material self-contained. Family, adoption and twin studies were investigated to determine the ways vulnerability to the disorder changed with genetic similarity to the patient. Together they supported the presence of a genetic contribution to the cause and the progress of schizophrenia. Contextual elements such as birth problems and stressful incidents were also analyzed to help the authors build a combined model to explain the disorder. The researchers analyzed populations to determine the role of genes using simplified mathematical models of the influence of genes and the environment on each other, and with no biochemical signal of the disorder to guide them. Rue L. Cromwell, writing in PsycCRITIQUES, wrote that this approach lacked rigor. The role of genes was less emphasized in the results, with a heritability of 70%, than in earlier studies by Kallman. The researchers investigated neuroanatomy, and specifically the neurotransmitter dopamine, as a possible route by which genes influence the functioning of the brain to produce the symptoms of the disorder.

The authors investigated autism and psychiatric disorders among children, but found little relation to adult schizophrenia or genetic influence. They also covered the social implications of the disease, concluding that most schizophrenics were poor because the disorder eroded their resources and abilities. A chapter was devoted to social issues, violence, illnesses, death rates, sexual aspects, and the ability to father or bear children affecting schizophrenics. The authors provided data on the chance of relapse after an episode of the disorder. The book covered new methods and new models for studying schizophrenia. Because the disorder had no unanimously accepted diagnostic criteria, the researchers asked six clinicians and three colleagues to provide their analyses on the reports on 120 twins, and found an agreement of 86% among the clinicians. Averaging the criteria of the clinicians produced a set close to that of Manfred Bleuler, who had adapted it from Emil Kraepelin.

"Schizophrenia Genesis: The Origins of Madness", written in 1991, won the William James award from the American Psychological Association. It extensively reviewed how science has looked at schizophrenia. The book presented a vulnerability/diathesis–stress model to explain the causes of the disorder and a many-cause, many-gene model to explain how it is passed from parents to children. The book has been translated into Japanese and German. "Schizophrenia Genesis" was written for both the lay person and the clinical professional, and provides data, methods of interpreting the data, and an introduction to genetic analysis as used to analyze role of inheritance in behavior. The book also contains accounts of schizophrenics, with an artist depicting own suffering, saying, "I know ... it is craziness when every laugh is about me ... newspapers suddenly contain cures ... sparkles of light are demon eyes."

"Schizophrenia Genesis" starts with the history of schizophrenia. Gottesman takes the view that schizophrenia is a disease of the industrial world. because it is not mentioned in the Bible, by the ancient Greeks, the ancient physicians, or authors including Shakespeare. He saw it first mentioned by physicians in 1809 and by Balzac in a short story in 1832, showing minimally the disorder had by then been recognized as such. In 1896, Kraepelin defined its symptoms, and his student Ernst Rüdin began a genetic study of its transmission in 1916.} The book noted that schizophrenia existed across cultures and its rates had stayed steady for fifty years.

A chapter was devoted to criteria for determining schizophrenia, with Gottesman preferring those developed by Bleuler to those in the American Psychiatric Association’s "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (version III-R), the "International Classification of Diseases" (ICD-9) and Kurt Schneider’s method. Diagnosis was based on the ways a person spoke and acted, and the standard measures were hallucinations, delusions, emotional apathy, jumbled thought, and sudden changes in a person. Gottesman mentioned a disparity in schizophrenia diagnosis after World War II across the Atlantic, when U.S. psychiatric diagnoses quadrupled those of British psychiatrists.

Gottesman is or has been:

Gottesman has been recognized by professional organizations in the United States, Britain, and Japan. He has received the following awards: