A WELL-LOVED local author led a gaggle of youngsters through the wardrobe into Narnia and back again at the Story Museum this week.

Over the summer holidays the museum in Pembroke Street is holding a week-long series of events, 'Expedition Through Stories', for youngsters to step inside and explore their favourite fictional worlds, from Wonderland to the babbling brooks of the Wind in the Willows.

Children's writer Jo Cotterill, from Kidlington, took little ones on a tour of the museum's Narnia exhibition before putting them through their paces constructing their own fantastical tales. She said: "It was brilliant. They were a really great bunch of kids and very enthusiastic. Some of them wrote pages and pages of stories.

"In the Narnia exhibition you go into a room, and behind the curtain is a wardrobe; you open the doors and there are fur coats, then you walk out through the doors into a room covered in pretend snow. There's a sleigh and a lamp post and trees - it's magical."