British author Roald Dahl was one of the greatest children's authors of all time, selling over 50 million books worldwide.
His stories include "James and the Giant Peach", "The Twits", "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "The Witches."
Now one of his stories has hit the big screen. A new British movie has been released of Fantastic Mr Fox, which Dahl wrote in 1970.
The animated movie features the voices of George Clooney as Mr Fox, Bill Murray as Badger, Michael Gambon as Bean, and former Pulp vocalist Jarvis Cocker as Petey.
And it's not the first big movie of a Roald Dahl classic - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has made it to the big screen on more than one occasion.
Roald Dahl was born in 1916 in Britain to Norwegian parents. He served with the RAF during WWII and, before the War, in the British Army.
Roald died in 1990 of a rare blood disease.
The anniversary of Roald Dahl's birthday - 13th September - has become known as Roald Dahl Day.
Blazingly original, uproariously rude - and VERY politically incorrect: The fantastic world of Roald Dahl
By Anthony Horowitz
22nd October 2009
Daily Mail
The poster for the new movie of a very English story
What is it with Roald Dahl? He died nearly 20 years ago, but remains one of the most loved and successful children's authors in the world, with sales heading north of 50 million books.
His fans aren't just parents nostalgic for the author they enjoyed when they were young. They include a new generation of readers who have embraced Dahl and claimed him for their own.
And now an animated version of Fantastic Mr Fox, the classic Dahl story written in 1970, is proving a huge success.
The Fantastic Mr Fox, a hugely successful new film of the 1970 Dahl book
Directed by the eclectic art-house director Wes Anderson, it is voiced by Hollywood royalty, with George Clooney and Meryl Streep in the lead roles.
Even before it goes on general release, it has received many ecstatic reviews - much like Tim Burton's 2005 take on that other Dahl classic, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.
There are many living children's authors - and, yes, I'm one of them - who might look at this success with a mixture of bafflement and envy.
Because, in truth, surviving 20 years in a fast-changing and increasingly competitive marketplace - and doing so posthumously - is no mean trick.
Favourite author: Roald Dahl thrilled youngsters and adults for two generations
There have been modern phenomena, launched on a wave of publicity and six-figure cheques, that have flickered and died in a blink of the eye.
Anyone remember Goosebumps? Or Animorphs? And it's been a while since I've seen any of those Unfortunate Events stories written by Lemony Snicket, even though the last one came out only in 2006.
If I go back to the books I loved as a boy, the casualty rate is even more dismal.
High on my reading list were Jennings, Biggles, Bunter and Blyton.
The first three of those have almost completely disappeared and Blyton, I would argue, exists only on a tidal wave of nostalgia and the sheer quantity - 700 books - of her output.
Children's books act as a barometer of the time in which they're written and only a few withstand the ebb and flow of social change. Anthony Buckeridge, for example, died only five years ago, but his greatest creation, Jennings, has rapidly faded from sight.
Perhaps our modern children find it hard to cope with his Jeeves style sense of humour, the Latin tags and schoolboys who use such insults as 'prehistoric clodpoll'.
But the prep school world of Linbury Court was already out of date when Buckeridge was writing. Sadly, the books no longer connect with the modern world.
That's also true of Biggles. What chance for a World War I and II fighter pilot when, apparently, a vast swathe of today's children associate Churchill with a nodding dog in an insurance advertisement?
Biggles was also undermined by his outmoded language and tarnished by that enemy of every children's author: political correctness - in his case, accusations of racism.
Those same forces killed Bunter stone dead - how many modern authors would dare use the word 'fat' to describe a child?
And yet Dahl got away with much, much more. One of the villains in Mr Fox is 'a kind of pot-bellied dwarf'. Another is 'enormously fat'.
Mr Fox suggests a world of bright, clever children, grotesque adults, rude jokes, casual cruelty and, at the end of the day, a huge love of life
Worse still, there's Augustus Gloop, a child in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, who is described as having 'fat bulging from every fold and with two greedy eyes peering out of his doughball of a head'.
It's often been pointed out that a certain cruelty and even sadism runs through Dahl's books.
You can almost imagine the headlines - 'Adult Forces Boy To Eat Entire Cake' (Charlie And The Chocolate Factory); 'Teacher Grabs Girl By Hair And Hurls Her Out Of School' (Matilda); 'Peach Crushes Spinster Aunt' (James And The Giant Peach) - and the frantic calls to Childline if any of these stories even approached real life.
But in that lies the key to Dahl's enduring success. He created not just a series of memorable books, but an entire world that is unique, associated only with him.
It suggests a world of bright, clever children, grotesque adults, rude jokes, casual cruelty, over-the-top violence, psychedelic flights of fancy and, at the end of the day, a huge love of life.
Our world is changing more rapidly than ever. Almost every day there seem to be new laws or directives that seek to change the way that we behave. But Dahl made his own laws, appealing to something that no politician could ever touch. That something-was childhood. Long before J. K. Rowling, Dahl was the first truly modern children's author, the first to throw out moralising, to ally himself 100 per cent with his young readers and take their side against the adult world.
Look at the way Matilda undermines her idiotic parents, or the way The Twits - his most repulsive and brilliant creations - destroy each other.
Look even at Charlie's all-absorbing love of chocolate, a hangover from Dahl's own youth and his memories of wartime rationing.
The truth is that Dahl understood childhood like no one else. He seized it with both hands.
Despite his Norwegian background, it was a very English childhood that Dahl captured in his books - typified by the utopian thatched cottage which Matilda ends up sharing with the kindly Miss Honey; by Sophie's friendship with the Queen in The BFG; by the pleasures of country pursuits such as poaching in Danny, The Champion Of The World.
His latest story to hit the big screen, Fantastic Mr Fox, is very short and has little description.
'In the wood there was a huge tree. Under the tree there was a hole.' That's almost all we learn of Mr Fox's home - but the atmosphere of Wind In The Willows pervades the book. It's inconceivable that the story could take place anywhere else.
Wes Anderson and Felicity Dahl at the Fantastic Mr Fox premiere
Last year, I was fortunate enough to be invited to dinner at Roald Dahl's home, Gipsy House in Great Missenden, Bucks.
It's an extraordinary place, a collision of story-book and historical England, sitting somewhere between Jane Austen and Agatha Christie with its striped lawns and topiary, its crazy paving and clematis.
Felicity Dahl, his widow, was a wonderful, formidably English hostess, serving rabbit stew that she might well have shot herself, accompanied by excellent wine from Dahl's legendary cellar.
As the gate swung shut behind me and I made my way past the orchard to the front door, I felt I was stepping back into my childhood. When I visited, I was also given the greatest honour of all - a trip to the writing hut where Dahl wrote his books, sitting in a slightly dilapidated armchair with a wooden board across his knees.
Again, I remember thinking that no other writer could possibly have worked like that - and that had his studio been featured on an episode of TV's Through The Keyhole, it would have taken the panellists mere seconds to guess the owner's identity.
There was the macabre - Dahl's hip bone is on display following a replacement. The childish - a large ball made up of the silver foil from countless chocolate bars.
The historical - a model of a Hurricane plane (which he flew in the war). And, of course, the pencils and pads - but no sign of a laptop - that were the tools of his trade.
I was also struck by the almost antique Anglepoise lamp that stood in the middle of it all - a lamp I recently saw again. For it is now the logo of Pixar, the company making some of the most inventive and successful children's films of all time.
Up, its latest release, has been acclaimed all over the world and took £41million on its opening weekend.
And it struck me that this link with Dahl was somehow appropriate. Because in many ways, Up could quite easily have been written by Dahl.
Pixar seems to have learned that great story-telling is timeless, that it belongs to a world of its own and obeys no one else's rules.
That, like childhood itself, it will always be old-fashioned and unchanging.
This is what Roald Dahl instinctively understood. And it is surely the reason why his work will be around long after so many children's authors have been forgotten.
Crocodile Tears, the new Alex Rider book by Anthony Horowitz, will be published by Walker Books on November 12.
dailymail.co.uk
His stories include "James and the Giant Peach", "The Twits", "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "The Witches."
Now one of his stories has hit the big screen. A new British movie has been released of Fantastic Mr Fox, which Dahl wrote in 1970.
The animated movie features the voices of George Clooney as Mr Fox, Bill Murray as Badger, Michael Gambon as Bean, and former Pulp vocalist Jarvis Cocker as Petey.
And it's not the first big movie of a Roald Dahl classic - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has made it to the big screen on more than one occasion.
Roald Dahl was born in 1916 in Britain to Norwegian parents. He served with the RAF during WWII and, before the War, in the British Army.
Roald died in 1990 of a rare blood disease.
The anniversary of Roald Dahl's birthday - 13th September - has become known as Roald Dahl Day.
Blazingly original, uproariously rude - and VERY politically incorrect: The fantastic world of Roald Dahl
By Anthony Horowitz
22nd October 2009
Daily Mail
The poster for the new movie of a very English story
What is it with Roald Dahl? He died nearly 20 years ago, but remains one of the most loved and successful children's authors in the world, with sales heading north of 50 million books.
His fans aren't just parents nostalgic for the author they enjoyed when they were young. They include a new generation of readers who have embraced Dahl and claimed him for their own.
And now an animated version of Fantastic Mr Fox, the classic Dahl story written in 1970, is proving a huge success.
The Fantastic Mr Fox, a hugely successful new film of the 1970 Dahl book
Directed by the eclectic art-house director Wes Anderson, it is voiced by Hollywood royalty, with George Clooney and Meryl Streep in the lead roles.
Even before it goes on general release, it has received many ecstatic reviews - much like Tim Burton's 2005 take on that other Dahl classic, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.
There are many living children's authors - and, yes, I'm one of them - who might look at this success with a mixture of bafflement and envy.
Because, in truth, surviving 20 years in a fast-changing and increasingly competitive marketplace - and doing so posthumously - is no mean trick.
Favourite author: Roald Dahl thrilled youngsters and adults for two generations
There have been modern phenomena, launched on a wave of publicity and six-figure cheques, that have flickered and died in a blink of the eye.
Anyone remember Goosebumps? Or Animorphs? And it's been a while since I've seen any of those Unfortunate Events stories written by Lemony Snicket, even though the last one came out only in 2006.
If I go back to the books I loved as a boy, the casualty rate is even more dismal.
High on my reading list were Jennings, Biggles, Bunter and Blyton.
The first three of those have almost completely disappeared and Blyton, I would argue, exists only on a tidal wave of nostalgia and the sheer quantity - 700 books - of her output.
Children's books act as a barometer of the time in which they're written and only a few withstand the ebb and flow of social change. Anthony Buckeridge, for example, died only five years ago, but his greatest creation, Jennings, has rapidly faded from sight.
Perhaps our modern children find it hard to cope with his Jeeves style sense of humour, the Latin tags and schoolboys who use such insults as 'prehistoric clodpoll'.
But the prep school world of Linbury Court was already out of date when Buckeridge was writing. Sadly, the books no longer connect with the modern world.
That's also true of Biggles. What chance for a World War I and II fighter pilot when, apparently, a vast swathe of today's children associate Churchill with a nodding dog in an insurance advertisement?
Biggles was also undermined by his outmoded language and tarnished by that enemy of every children's author: political correctness - in his case, accusations of racism.
Those same forces killed Bunter stone dead - how many modern authors would dare use the word 'fat' to describe a child?
And yet Dahl got away with much, much more. One of the villains in Mr Fox is 'a kind of pot-bellied dwarf'. Another is 'enormously fat'.
Mr Fox suggests a world of bright, clever children, grotesque adults, rude jokes, casual cruelty and, at the end of the day, a huge love of life
Worse still, there's Augustus Gloop, a child in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, who is described as having 'fat bulging from every fold and with two greedy eyes peering out of his doughball of a head'.
It's often been pointed out that a certain cruelty and even sadism runs through Dahl's books.
You can almost imagine the headlines - 'Adult Forces Boy To Eat Entire Cake' (Charlie And The Chocolate Factory); 'Teacher Grabs Girl By Hair And Hurls Her Out Of School' (Matilda); 'Peach Crushes Spinster Aunt' (James And The Giant Peach) - and the frantic calls to Childline if any of these stories even approached real life.
But in that lies the key to Dahl's enduring success. He created not just a series of memorable books, but an entire world that is unique, associated only with him.
It suggests a world of bright, clever children, grotesque adults, rude jokes, casual cruelty, over-the-top violence, psychedelic flights of fancy and, at the end of the day, a huge love of life.
Our world is changing more rapidly than ever. Almost every day there seem to be new laws or directives that seek to change the way that we behave. But Dahl made his own laws, appealing to something that no politician could ever touch. That something-was childhood. Long before J. K. Rowling, Dahl was the first truly modern children's author, the first to throw out moralising, to ally himself 100 per cent with his young readers and take their side against the adult world.
Look at the way Matilda undermines her idiotic parents, or the way The Twits - his most repulsive and brilliant creations - destroy each other.
Look even at Charlie's all-absorbing love of chocolate, a hangover from Dahl's own youth and his memories of wartime rationing.
The truth is that Dahl understood childhood like no one else. He seized it with both hands.
Despite his Norwegian background, it was a very English childhood that Dahl captured in his books - typified by the utopian thatched cottage which Matilda ends up sharing with the kindly Miss Honey; by Sophie's friendship with the Queen in The BFG; by the pleasures of country pursuits such as poaching in Danny, The Champion Of The World.
His latest story to hit the big screen, Fantastic Mr Fox, is very short and has little description.
'In the wood there was a huge tree. Under the tree there was a hole.' That's almost all we learn of Mr Fox's home - but the atmosphere of Wind In The Willows pervades the book. It's inconceivable that the story could take place anywhere else.
Wes Anderson and Felicity Dahl at the Fantastic Mr Fox premiere
Last year, I was fortunate enough to be invited to dinner at Roald Dahl's home, Gipsy House in Great Missenden, Bucks.
It's an extraordinary place, a collision of story-book and historical England, sitting somewhere between Jane Austen and Agatha Christie with its striped lawns and topiary, its crazy paving and clematis.
Felicity Dahl, his widow, was a wonderful, formidably English hostess, serving rabbit stew that she might well have shot herself, accompanied by excellent wine from Dahl's legendary cellar.
As the gate swung shut behind me and I made my way past the orchard to the front door, I felt I was stepping back into my childhood. When I visited, I was also given the greatest honour of all - a trip to the writing hut where Dahl wrote his books, sitting in a slightly dilapidated armchair with a wooden board across his knees.
Again, I remember thinking that no other writer could possibly have worked like that - and that had his studio been featured on an episode of TV's Through The Keyhole, it would have taken the panellists mere seconds to guess the owner's identity.
There was the macabre - Dahl's hip bone is on display following a replacement. The childish - a large ball made up of the silver foil from countless chocolate bars.
The historical - a model of a Hurricane plane (which he flew in the war). And, of course, the pencils and pads - but no sign of a laptop - that were the tools of his trade.
I was also struck by the almost antique Anglepoise lamp that stood in the middle of it all - a lamp I recently saw again. For it is now the logo of Pixar, the company making some of the most inventive and successful children's films of all time.
Up, its latest release, has been acclaimed all over the world and took £41million on its opening weekend.
And it struck me that this link with Dahl was somehow appropriate. Because in many ways, Up could quite easily have been written by Dahl.
Pixar seems to have learned that great story-telling is timeless, that it belongs to a world of its own and obeys no one else's rules.
That, like childhood itself, it will always be old-fashioned and unchanging.
This is what Roald Dahl instinctively understood. And it is surely the reason why his work will be around long after so many children's authors have been forgotten.
Crocodile Tears, the new Alex Rider book by Anthony Horowitz, will be published by Walker Books on November 12.
dailymail.co.uk