They lived at Hampton, near Kingston upon Thames, then Esher, before moving to Gloucestershire in 1942, and Beckford, Worcestershire, in 1945. She married Conrad Southey "Peter" John in 1935. Personal problems including her brother's ill health, family crises, the death of her husband, the loss of an eye, and her near death to cancer, interrupted her work, but the indomitable author went on writing until the age of 80, and achieved the longest published career of any children's writer of her generation. Locally she was greatly admired for her many acts of kindness and an instinctive Christian faith. Much of her later writing included disruptive, but essentially good-hearted children, and was influenced by her work as a juvenile magistrate and as a highly involved school governor. She worked with illustrators like Shirley Hughes, Faith Jaques and Edward Ardizzone.
She was a friend of Puffin Books editor Kaye Webb, and organised riotous parties for the Puffin Club, of which she was made the first honorary member. In many regards, her life was as remarkable and inspirational as that of her fictional heroes. Events from her remarkable childhood recur repeatedly in her fiction, with North Stoneham described at greatest length in the 1941 A Castle for John-Peter and depicted in Faith Jaques’ illustrations for Grandpapa's Folly and the Woodworm-Bookworm of 1974. Williams' greatest source of ideas, however, was the extraordinary house in which she spent her teenage years, North Stoneham House, a large, dilapidated mansion set in woodland north of Southampton. Its final volume, The Toymaker's Daughter, was among her finest and most moving creations. Thanks to their uncle, the publisher Stanley Unwin, the twins visited the Alps, which later inspired some of Ursula's most vivid writing, most notably the trilogy that began with The Three Toymakers. To save for a pony they kept goats, selling their milk which they refused to drink themselves. The girls were also keen riders – on hobby horses at first. Both were enthusiastic Girl Guides, attending some of the movement's first camps, and some of Ursula's early books were collections of stories she had told to her own Brownie pack.
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