THE curious customs of Malvern College in the 1920s are explored in a local author’s new biography of one of Britain’s best-loved children’s writers.

Colin Davison’s book Through the Magic Door: Ursula Moray Williams, Gobolino and the Little Wooden Horse has been published this month by Northumbria Press, exactly 100 years after the famous author’s birth.

Mr Davison explains that, while Ursula and her identical twin sister hardly went to school at all, the family sent their only son, Alan, to Malvern College.

“His parents had taught at one of the country’s most progressive and liberal establishments, Bedales School, but Alan soon found the regime at Malvern very different when he went there in 1928,” he said. “Information for pupils stated that round collars were obligatory for the first two years, and all jacket buttons had to be fastened for the first year in school.

“Even hands were regulated. Boys were allowed to keep one hand in a trouser pocket only after three terms, and both in their pockets only after six.”

Mr Davison said Alan was even required to sit in his study with one foot in the corridor, in order to arrive in the shortest possible time when called to “fag” for older boys. When he arrived, he would be expected to hold bread slices in his bare hands in front of the fire because the use of a toasting fork was not allowed.

“There was an ironic twist in Alan being given the privilege of an expensive private education that his sisters were denied,” said Mr Davison. “Left at home in a crumbling mansion, Ursula enjoyed an extraordinary, magical childhood that inspired many of her classic stories, while Alan grew up in resentment of conservative authority and joined the Communist party.”

Ursula Moray Williams lived in Worcestershire for more than 60 years until her death in a Tewkesbury nursing home, aged 95, in 2006.