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The latest New Yorker contains an article about Mr. Willy Wonka's creator:
Roald Dahl, the British author of children’s books, wrote in a tiny cottage at the end of a trellised pathway canopied with twisting linden trees. He called it the "writing hut," and, since Dahl was nearly six feet six, he must have inhabited it like a giant in an elf’s house. Dahl died in 1990, at the age of seventy-four, but one day a year his widow, Felicity, invites children to the estate where he lived, in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, and local families swarm in like guests at Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory...
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07 July 2005
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2 comments:
I remember when he died. If he were alive now, he would be just 89 and possibly writing even more wonderful stories!
Dahl seemed to have a dark view of marriage, I always thought. I wonder what he'd make of this pointless Burton-infested remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - he did write the screenplay of the original.
I remember hearing Fantastic Mr. Fox read aloud by our school librarian the year after it came out. Also, Roald Dahl was a familiar figure appearing on TV in my teens, introducing Tales of the Unexpected - some of these were ghastly!
He said he used to sit shut away in his writing hut with a rug wrapped round his knees and write without interruption. Maybe that's the only way to get a book done...
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