Robert Stevenson directs Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke and David Tomlinson in this fantasy musical about a magical nanny who brightens up an Edwardian London’s family’s lives.

One of the true cinematic greats – wonderously catchy songs (the rousing “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” is my fave but they are all golden), wizardly special FX and enthusiastic performances. There’s not a sequence that doesn’t stoke the imagination and caress the heart. I’m not a massive fan of Julie Andrews outside of the enigmatic but practically perfect Poppins but she is iconic here. Yet the support work from “cock-err-nee” charmer Dick Van Dyke, put upon Dad Tomlinson and sweetly enthused suffragette mum Glynis Johns is equally captivating. Movie magic, with a spoonful of melancholy, that gets me every time. “I shall stay until the wind changes.”

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