Last week I saw Howl’s Moving Castle, the latest anime gem from that “King of animation” Hayao Miyazaki. Next week I will be experiencing something rather less enjoyable: my 24th birthday. Each time I contemplate this impending doom I soothe myself by thinking of Sophie, the inspirational heroine of Miyazaki’s wonderful film, a mere 18-year-old who is cursed by the evil Witch of the Waste and transformed into a 90-year-old woman.

Howl’s Moving Castle was described at the 2004 Cannes film festival as being the film with the biggest “anti-war message”. Miyazaki comments that production started on Howl at the start of the Iraq war, and that it had a “great impact on them.” Nigel Andrews from the Financial Times, who met Miyazaki at the 2005 Venice film festival describes Howl’s Moving Castle as a “blend of innocence and apocalypse.”