At Gipsy House, the family home in Buckinghamshire where Roald Dahl dreamt up Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach and The BFG, the atmosphere is so thick with his presence that it feels as if he has been gone but a few minutes. As his widow, Liccy, talks about Dahl, one half expects him to step back in from having a cigarette in the garden or come creaking down the stairs.
I am not in the habit of taking my children to interviews, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to give them a peek at the home of their favourite author. When Michael Jackson died and I explained to my son that he was famous, he said: “More famous than Roald Dahl?” Liccy Dahl cross-examines him on his favourite Dahl book. The BFG, he says. That book, she explains, originated upstairs as a bedtime story for Dahl’s own children. “It started with Roald pretending he was the BFG [Big Friendly Giant], which of course he was. He was six foot six.”
Later, as Liccy sits chatting in the dining room while a cook whisks away in the kitchen, it becomes clear why Roald feels so eerily present. New Roald Dahl projects are being conceived all the time at this long dining-room table.
Dahl died almost 20 years ago but is selling even more books than during his lifetime. Amanda Conquy, an old family friend who was at nursery school with Dahl’s daughter, Tessa, and now runs the literary estate, is coy about exact figures. “He was selling millions and he continues to sell even more millions. He’s one of the world’s bestselling storytellers and that’s extraordinary for somebody who has been dead for 20 years. When I started I would never have used the word ‘brand’. But I can’t now ignore it. He makes a brilliant brand.”
This autumn an animated movie of Fantastic Mr Fox starring George Clooney and Meryl Streep is released. John Cleese has been involved in the early development of Working Title’s film of The Twits. A musical of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, involving Sam Mendes, is intended for the West End and Broadway, while the RSC is working on a production of Matilda.
Then there is the merchandising and the Roald Dahl Foundation, which gives millions to charity, and the Roald Dahl Museum down the road from Gipsy House in Great Missenden. Tomorrow, his birthday, is Roald Dahl Day. Originally a one-off, it is now an annual event and for the first time is happening in America as well. Last week the shortlist was announced for the second Roald Dahl Funny Prize, which is awarded to authors of humorous books for under-6s and 7 to 14-year-olds.
Roald Dahl was a brilliant writer of adult and children’s fiction, and a charismatic man who could be amusing, generous and kind, but also difficult and domineering. Today, thanks to the careful management of his legacy by Liccy, he is the Big Friendly Giant of the literary canon.
The main reason for this, of course, is that the books have endured, while memories of the more disagreeable side of Dahl have faded. David Walliams, whose first children’s book has been shortlisted for the Funny Prize, was a childhood fan who reread the books before writing his own tale of youthful cross-dressing, The Boy in the Dress, “because I wanted to learn from the master”.
The Little Britain actor believes the books are still popular because the narratives are unpredictable, they are all different — not a series — and they haven’t dated. “I thought they might feel a bit Sixties or Seventies, but they don’t feel like that at all. He was brilliant at knowing what kids are interested in. What could be more exciting than a chocolate bar with a golden ticket in it?
“When Danny (in Danny, the Champion of the World) drives his father’s car there is a fantastic sense of power there. I have just read The BFG and going off through the night in the arms of a giant, that’s really fantastic. The sense of freedom he creates is wonderful.”
Michael Rosen, who set up the Funny Prize, says that when you compare Dahl’s work with other children’s writers “you realise how fertile he was”. The extreme characters and their exploits “take kids’ breath away, no matter what they have been exposed to”. And then there is the crisp, unflashy writing. “You can hear him chuckling. The prose chuckles.” While Rosen is keen to discover new funny writers he is not expecting another Dahl. “We may never do. No one is going to write like Dickens again. It happened. We’ve got the incredible books, that’s it.”
Henry Selick, who directed the film of James and the Giant Peach produced by Tim Burton, says that Dahl was “one of only a handful of authors who understood the true minds of children. I found the books delicious. He allowed kids to do nasty things to adults who deserved it. He was like the favourite uncle that your parents didn’t necessarily approve of, but who takes kids out and gives them a hell of a good time.” Burton visited Gipsy House while filming his version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He recalls: “Liccy showed me his original handwritten manuscripts and they were incredible. He was even more politically incorrect than what ended up in the book, you know. Originally he had five other kids; he had a kid named Herpes in it. When you’re a kid you like things that are dangerous and scary. That’s part of what sparks your growth and creativity.”
Rosen says that specifically Dahl knew that children often had ambivalent feelings about their parents. “As parents we quite often don’t want to admit that. He exploited that feeling that on occasion you hate your parental figures.”
Dahl, whose books often feature child heroes who are orphaned, or who have intense relationships with a single parental figure, was the son of Norwegians and grew up in Cardiff. His father died of pneumonia when he was 3 (a week after Dahl’s seven-year-old sister had died of appendicitis) and he had a strong bond with his mother, who inspired the grandmother in The Witches.
After he left boarding school he worked for Shell and flew fighters with some heroism during the Second World War over North Africa. He was later dispatched to Washington to work in intelligence, schmoozing the great and the good and seemingly seducing every wealthy, powerful woman in the cause of information-gathering. He started being published in America.
He married the Oscar-winning American actress Patricia Neal and they had five children but their family life was clouded by tragedy. Olivia, their eldest, died of measles aged 7. Theo was brain damaged as a baby after a traffic accident. When Neal was pregnant with Lucy, their youngest, she suffered a series of strokes.
“I don’t know how he existed when Pat had her stroke and he ran the house, cooked, took them to school; or how he wrote,” Liccy says. “He needed money so he did the screenplays and that was working from probably 4 o’clock in the morning. He slept only three hours a night.”
With typical, bullish singlemindedness, Dahl organised intensive therapy for Neal and she eventually returned to acting, but their marriage was troubled and he had entanglements with other women. In the early Seventies he began a serious affair with Felicity (Liccy) Crosland, a young divorcée who had originally been Pat’s friend and happened to also have been born in Cardiff. The marriage to Pat eventually ended in 1983 and Dahl and Liccy wed. Liccy’s own children and Dahl’s “are always in and out” of Gipsy House. Her stepgrandson, Luke, lives in the annexe. Many of the clan, including the cookery writer, children’s author and former model Sophie, participate in Dahlrelated public events.
The Georgian farmhouse is crammed with Dahl-related artwork, which includes original illustrations by Quentin Blake, and book and film memorabilia. An ornament of a fox, that looks like it should be merchandising for the forthcoming film, turns out to have been a Christmas gift from Pat to Liccy a few years ago. She says that the director Wes Anderson has included it in his film.
The story of the making of Fantastic Mr Fox illustrates how cautiously Liccy Dahl and her advisers treat requests to adapt her husband’s work. With almost all projects they insist on script and director approval.
Anderson asked about making a film a decade ago. Later he “came here and lived in this house and wrote the script here. When he first came we walked all over the countryside on a day worse than this (it is pouring). We were covered in mud by the time we got home. He came here for two weeks and wrote. It was wonderful, it was absolutely hilarious. And Tim Burton did exactly the same, and Johnny [Depp, who starred in Burton’s version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory].
“We say more nos and very few yeses.” Danny DeVito, who directed Matilda, made a pitch for James and the Giant Peach. “He longed to have it. He hadn’t actually diagnosed how it could be made so I had to say no and then he was devastated.
“We always say to scriptwriters and directors that they should look at the original manuscript. There are five manuscripts for each book at least.” They are also taken into the little hut in the garden where Dahl wrote. “I think it’s very inspirational. How do you write an adaptation to anything without seeing the source. Tim Burton burst into tears. When I said to him, ‘Why do you want to make a film of James and the Giant Peach?’ he said, ‘It was the only book that gave me any hope as a child’.”
Liccy says: “It’s very important on both sides. For them to feel the original manuscripts and the way it was written and for us to feel them.” By “us” does she also mean Roald? “He’s still here.” Does she feel him in the house? “Yes, yes, yes,” she says quietly.
When they were together he followed “a very simple, routine, disciplined life as most writers should and generally do. He would probably have breakfast in bed and do the post and then go up to the hut at 10-10.30ish and work ’til 12.30 or quarter to 1 and then come down and have lunch. Then he’d have a siesta and have a gamble and look at the sport and then get up at 3.30-4 and go back up to the hut until 6.30-7 and then down for dinner. Every single day. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday ... And the evening was when he wanted people round him. Such a lonely hell of a lonely life being a writer I think.”
I gently inquire about his grumpiness. “Oh frightfully grumpy! Yes, yes of course,” she says cheerfully. “Loved to be grumpy. Always grumpy when he was finishing a book. I used to say: ‘Aren’t you pleased it’s nearly done?’ He said: ‘You don’t understand, it’s the fear of never being able to write another one.’”
In his biography of Dahl, published after his death, Jeremy Treglown documented occasions when he was more than grumpy. There were bitter fallings out with publishers. He had a tendency towards shameless self-promotion and could be domineering with publishing company staff and his family. He sometimes seemed to humiliate his first wife in public and said things purely to shock at dinner parties. He was deprived of his membership of the Curzon House Club after drunkenly complaining about the number of Jewish members and was embroiled in a more serious row over charges of anti-Semitism in a book review he wrote.
Donald Sturrock, who became a friend of Dahl’s towards the end of his life and is writing a new biography, with the co-operation of the family, says that Dahl certainly “had a temper, particularly when he had a few drinks inside him and enjoyed getting a rise out of people. He would ask people at dinner parties how much they earned.”
But he thinks much of Dahl’s reputation for being cantankerous can be attributed to two factors. “He didn’t fit with the London literary establishment. He fitted much better in New York.” Both James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were published first in America and struggled to find publishers in Britain. “It’s extraordinary that in the 20 years since he died he has come to be regarded as a really great writer, in a way he wasn’t in his life. I think that upset him. It was amazing the hostility he faced from people who thought he was slightly trashy.” There was, he thinks, a lingering belief, 30 or 40 years ago that “farts and bad smells were not what good children’s literature was about”.
Second, in his later years Dahl was in pain. He had back problems and underwent many operations on his spine. He had a hip replacement that went wrong and had to be re-done and latterly suffered from bowel cancer. “He was in quite a lot of pain. I didn’t realise how much,” Sturrock says.
The books also caused rows. The Oompa-Loompas were originally black pygmies but he was persuaded to change this for later editions. Liccy finds accusations of racism extraordinary. “If anybody opened their arms to people it was him. He was [accused of being] anti-women. I would just say ‘Read The Witches’. That grandmother could not be more pro women. Matilda has Miss Honey. There are good women and there are bad women. Islington banned The Witches, oh God help us!”
She recalls how Dahl loved getting up to pranks with children, such as putting a ladder up to a bedroom window to pretend to be the BFG or lacing food with vivid colouring. “He loved children but he would be tough with them. He wouldn’t stand nonsense. And he would be quite scary with them at moments. But they liked that.” He told his children there were wolves in the writing hut. “And they were convinced.”
Liccy says we can go in the hut but she doesn’t join us. “I find it harder and harder, funnily enough.” Pesto, her Jack Russell, scampers with us through the gardens, past the gypsy caravan that features in Danny, Champion of the World, to the little shed that he called “a kind of womb”.
It is just as he left it. The old armchair in which he sat, with a portion cut out of it to ease pressure on his back. The roll of cardboard on which he supported a writing board on his lap. The sleeping bag in which he sat to keep snug. A shabby curtain covering the window because he liked to keep the room dark. Occasionally someone gives it a dust, but clearly not often.
A photograph of Pat is among shots of the rest of the family on the wall. A small museum of items on a side table includes his hip bone and a heavy ball made of foil Kit Kat wrappers. Even his last cigarettes are still in the ashtray.
We leave the shrine to Roald Dahl’s imagination, but Roald Dahl’s imagination has not finished with us. We head back to the car, which is parked in a field in front of the Min Pin woods, where the Terrible Bloodsuckling Toothpluckling Stonechuckling Spittler lives. My son agrees to have his photograph taken with the woods behind him but when I suggest we go a bit closer for a look he quickly hops back in the car.
The Roald Dahl Funny Prize is run by the independent reading charity Booktrust, www.booktrust.org.uk. Fantastic Mr Fox opens The Times BFI London Film Festival on October 14. Watch the trailer at timesonline.co.uk/film
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