No One Must Know

The story concerns a small group of children living in English town, sandwiched between a railway and a warehouse, in a row of rented, white-painted terraced houses, where the landlord will allow no pets.

[1] The story begins with the arrival of new tenants at Number Six, an end-house in Cumberland Place, which is a poky town-centre street sandwiched between a railway and a warehouse.

The incoming family consists of a little girl, Jenny Hawthorn, and her father (she has lost her mother in a car crash), and a cat named Thomas (p.

Jenny and two of her new neighbours, Barty Fergus and Molly Dudgeon, find a secret place for them on a piece of waste land, which they call Tom Tiddler's Ground.

Three other children from the Place – Sam, Midge and Molly's younger brother Tony – are brought into the secret.

The book became the basis of a Jackanory BBC children's television series of five 15-minute parts in 1969, directed and adapted by Jeremy Swan.