07 July 2005

Roald Dahl in the New Yorker

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...

Read the rest.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I remember when he died. If he were alive now, he would be just 89 and possibly writing even more wonderful stories!

Ian T. said...

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...