October 2011 Guest Editor Roddy Doyle. All of Dahl’s books are great, but this one stands out for two reasons: 1. the poaching plans, and the poaching itself, are brilliantly precise and an invitation to the reader to choose poaching as a career, or at least a hobby; and, 2. the love between the father and son is wonderfully written, and probably the best I’ve read.
A complete, unabridged recording of this famous story of Danny and his father who outwit their greedy, rich neighbour, Mr Victor Hazell. Read by Will Young.
Roald Dahl was born in Wales of Norwegian parents – the child of a second marriage. His father and elder sister died when Roald was just three. His mother was left to raise two stepchildren and her own four children. Roald was her only son.
He had an unhappy time at school - at Llandaff Cathedral School, at St Peter’s prep school in Weston-super-Mare and then at Repton in Derbyshire.
Dahl’s unhappy time at school was to influence his writing greatly. He once said that what distinguished him from most other children’s writers was “this business of remembering what it was like to be young”. Roald’s childhood and schooldays are the subject of his autobiography Boy.
Since Roald Dahl’s death, his books have more than maintained their popularity. Total sales of the UK editions are around 37 million, with more than 1 million copies sold every year! Sales have grown particularly strongly in America where Dahl books are now achieving the bestselling status that curiously proved elusive during the author’s lifetime.
