Story, from E. Nesbit’s w.k. novel set in the Edwardian age, concerns a well-to-do family whose life’s turned upside down when the father (something in the Foreign Office) is unjustly jailed. The family, in straitened circumstances, go to live on the Yorkshire moors.
They soon adapt to the new life, make friends with the goodhearted villagers, and particularly with a well-to-do gent whom they enlist to help clear their father.
The village is near a railway and this becomes the centre of their activities with the local porter and general railway factotum becoming one of their most useful allies.
Much of the film’s success depends on the trio of children. Eldest is played with grave confidence by snub-nosed Jenny Agutter.
