His masterpieces, from The BFG, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda, to his lesser (but just as puckishly wonderful) works, such as The Twits and George’s Marvellous Medicine, are stories that revel in the gloopy, sticky nastiness of faery tale villainy and phantasmagorical threat, and they are, quite rightly, an integral part of the formative literary landscape of most people of my generation.ĭahl’s work now, on close inspection, sits rather awkwardly with contemporary children’s books with their conventional family issues, flatulence and sassy protagonists. His cantankerous refusal to pull back to either save the small reader their nightmares or the larger reader their blushes is what makes his work so irresistible, so necessary. The universal success of the children’s books of Llandaff author Roald Dahl has a lot to do with his Mephistophelean delight in the darkness. In the anniversary month of Roald Dahl’s hundredth birthday, we take a look at Gary Raymond‘s review of Fantastic Mr Fox for our Greatest Welsh Novel series.Ī childhood must be hardly worth having if it is one protected from the dark.
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