Roald Dahl (44 page)
Authors: Jeremy Treglown
22
.
The Horn Book
, February 1973. Also reprinted in Paul Heins's selection, referred to above.
23
. Ibid.
C
HAPTER
12
Main sources
AK
Interviews with Annabella, Robert and Helen Bernstein, Lucy Dahl, Tessa Dahl, Colin Fox, Robert Gottlieb, Valerie Eaton Griffith, Patricia Neal, Dennis Pearl, Ian Rankin, Rayner Unwin
As I Am
N
OTES
1
. Interviews with Rayner Unwin and Ian Rankin.
2
. Interview with Ian Rankin.
3
. Interview with Valerie Eaton Griffith.
4
. The Volunteer Stroke Scheme is part of the Stroke Association (formerly, the Chest, Heart and Stroke Association), CHSA House, Whitecross Street, London EC1Y 8JJ.
5
.
Danny
, p. 8.
6
. Ibid., p. 26.
7
. Interviews with Betsy Drake and Patricia Neal.
8
. Interviews with Tessa Dahl and Patricia Neal.
9
. Interview with Annabella.
10
. Interview with Tessa Dahl.
11
. Quoted in an article by Barry Farrell in
TV Guide
, December 5, 1981.
12
. Interview with Valerie Eaton Griffith.
13
. Angela Levin in You magazine, October 6, 1991.
14
. Information from Valerie Finnis.
15
.
Memories with Food
, p. 48.
16
. Interview with Ian Rankin.
17
. Interviews with Alastair Reid and Brough Girling; conversation with Martin Amis.
18
. Conversation with Gitta Sereny.
19
.
Interviews with Robert and Helen Bernstein.
20
. Some years later, the literary critic Hermione Lee visited Gipsy House to interview Dahl for a television program. He spoke aggressively against literary criticism and academia, and the pointlessness of writing books about people like Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowenâas Lee herself had done.
21
. H. Montgomery Hyde,
The Quiet Canadian:
The Secret Service Story of Sir William Stephenson (1962).
22
. Interview with Colin Fox.
23
.
As I Am
, pp. 325f.
24
. Ibid., p. 337.
25
. The letter is quoted verbatim in
As I Am
, p. 339.
26
. Correspondence with the Society of Authors, February 1 and 5, 1976.
27
. See Chapter 13, n. 5f.
28
.
WSHS
, p. 174.
29
. Patricia Neal to Charles and Claudia Marsh, CM [1954].
30
. AK, April 24, May 4, 18, and 25, 1979.
31
. Interviews with Edmund and Marian Goodman; conversations with Richard Hough, John Mortimer, Kaye Webb, and others.
32
.
Evening Standard
, October 25, 1979.
33
. AK cuttings file, autumn 1980.
34
. Interview with Lucy Dahl.
35
. AK, June 4, 1979.
36
. Ibid., May 11, 1987.
37
. Ibid., December 4, 1979.
38
. At this stage, Dahl called these poems “Dirty Beasts.” Both the title and some of the rhymes he originally submitted to Knopf were in fact saved for his next book of verses, which was published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (see Chapter 13, n. 22).
39
. AK, September 22, 1980.
C
HAPTER
13
Main sources
AK; FSG; Cape production files at Reading University Library
Interviews with Quentin Blake, Robert Gottlieb, Tom Maschler, Stephen Roxburgh, Roger Straus
N
OTES
1
. Alfonso's name is given there as Alphonsus, Sofie's as Sophie.
2
. Interview with Lucy Dahl.
3
.
Memories with Food
, pp. 32, 48.
4
. For this section I have drawn on interviews with Quentin Blake and Tom Maschler, and correspondence with several of Dahl's other illustrators and publishers: see Further Acknowledgments.
5
.
These terms were negotiated for the Dahl/Blake books which followed
The Enormous Crocodile
in a series of letters between Dahl and Gottlieb between January and May 1980.
6
. AK, August 6, 1980.
7
. Ibid., December 4, 1979.
8
. Ibid., March 4, 1980.
9
. Ibid., September 22, 1980.
10
. See Chapter 8, n. 10.
11
. See n. 22, below.
12
. AK, February 12, 1980.
13
. Ibid., March 4, 1980.
14
. Interview with Robert Gottlieb.
15
. AK, June 8, 1980.
16
. Ibid., July 1, 1980.
17
. Ibid., February 10, 1981.
18
. The paperback deal (with Bantam) was made in July 1977.
19
. AK, January 26, 1981.
20
. Ibid., February 10, 1981.
21
. Ibid., March 5, 1981, and interview with Robert Gottlieb.
22
. FSG, December 29, 1981.
23
. Ibid.
24
. Ãrnulf Hodne's
The Types of the Norwegian Fairytale
is full of stories which in outline resemble Dahl's: encounters like those in
The BFG
between children, ogres, and royal personages are particularly common. Another type involves several different creatures on a voyage, in the course of which, as in
James and the Giant Peach
, each expresses its fear in a characteristic way. Many of the tales are set in magical underworlds like that in
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
, or concern children with magical powers, or encounters between children and witches. Fox fables are also common, of course, as they are in all European folk cultures. So are elixirs and other transforming potions. Hans Christian Andersen has a story about miraculous flight on a swan's back [cf. p. 273]; Grimm has several involving the pursuit of fabulous wealth in which, as in
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
, the pursuer is required to achieve the correct balance between being greedy and being
too
greedy.
25
. Xerox of Valerie Buckingham's notes on
The BFG
and Dahl's comments on them, in the FSG file on the book.
26
.
The BFG
, p. 104. Dahl added the words “âBoys would,' Sophie said.”
27
. FSG, February 14, 1982.
28
. The Bloodbottler's words about Chileans which appear on page 58 of the FSG edition and the conversation between the Queen of England and the King of Sweden, p. 183.
29
. FSG, March 1, 1982.
30
. Ibid., October 25, 1984.
31
.
Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories
, 1983.
32
. FSG, March 26, 1983.
33
. Interview with Quentin Blake.
34
. Interview with Tom Maschler.
35
.
For example, Anne Pasternak Slater in
Harper's and Queen
.
36
. Letter from Hans Georg Heepe of Rowohlt.
37
. Letter from Koukla MacLehose.
38
. Russell Davies,
Sunday Times
, August 28, 1983.
39
.
TLS
, July 22, 1983.
40
. FSG, May 16, 1983.
41
. Maria Salvadore, District of Columbia Public Library, in FSG cuttings file.
42
. Omaha Public Schools review sheet in FSG cuttings file.
43
. Murray Pollinger to Roger Straus, FSG, November 17, 1981.
44
. According to Cape's production records, in the archives at the Reading University Library, the first printing of 25,000 sold out and Cape printed a further 10,000 copies. But correspondence from foreign publishers, including Gyldendal in Norway, indicates an overwhelming preference for the later Quentin Blake edition.
45
. Interview with Stephen Roxburgh.
46
. Personal letter from Stephen Roxburgh.
47
. Interview with Stephen Roxburgh.
48
.
The Witches
, p. 19.
49
.
The BFG
, p. 49.
50
.
TES
, December 27, 1985.
51
.
Michele Landsberg's Guide to Children's Books
, 1986.
52
. Ibid., p. 72.
53
.
The New York Times Book Review
, November 13, 1983.
54
. FSG, May 20, 1983.
55
. Ibid., October 25, 1984.
56
. Ibid., April 28, 1983.
57
. Ibid., May 16, 1983.
C
HAPTER
14
Main sources
FSG; files of the
Literary Review
Interviews with Elizabeth Attenborough, Lucy Dahl, Tessa Dahl, Valerie Eaton Griffith, Tom Maschler, Peter Mayer, Anthony Page, Stephen Roxburgh, Roger Straus
N
OTES
1
. Interview with Roger Straus.
2
. FSG, May 15, 1987.
3
. Ibid., August 23, 1987.
4
. Ibid., June 22, 1987.
5
. Interview with Martha Gellhorn.
6
. Dahl no longer wanted it to be publicized that he wrote for
Playboy
and, when the magazine bought parts of
My Uncle Oswald
, insisted on a contract
that did not require him to acknowledge the fact in the eventual book (AK, November 15, 1979).
7
. FSG, May 20, 1983.
8
. Interviews with Tom Maschler and Stephen Roxburgh.
9
. Interview with Brough Girling.
10
. Powling.
11
. FSG, April 28, 1983.
12
. Interview with Anthony Page.
13
. Powling, p. 11.
14
. Ibid., p. 42.
15
. Ibid., p. 43.
16
. See Chapter 8, n. 28.
17
. Powling, pp. 58â58.
18
. FSG, February 14, 1984.
19
. Ibid., May 15, 1984.
20
. Ibid., August 17, 1984.
21
. Ibid., September 26, 1984.
22
. Ibid., October 2, 1984.
23
. Interviews with Stephen Roxburgh and Tom Maschler.
24
. Interview with Tom Maschler.
25
. FSG, September 11 and 14, 1984.
26
. Powling, p. 66. Dahl had a variety of standard replies, comical and charming, many of them in doggerel. Oneâaddressed to “Dear gorgeous [name of teacher] and all the clever people at [name of school]”âbegan: “Oh, wondrous children miles away, / Your letters brightened up my day.” Another ended by saying that Dahl was glad to know that he had made “You children, and occasionally the staff / Stop work, and have instead a little laugh.” (Information supplied by Liz Attenborough and Carolyn Hemmings.)
27
. “A Visit to Roald Dahl,” by “Karen Coad,” see n. 17 above.
28
.
Memories with Food
, p. 227.
29
. Interviews with Lucy Dahl and Tessa Dahl.
30
. Personal experience of the author.
The Times Literary Supplement
's reviewer, Malcolm Yapp, was moved by the book's pictures but found the text tendentious and sensationalist (
TLS
, August 26, 1983).
31
.
The New Statesman
, August 26, 1983.
32
. Interview with Sir Isaiah Berlin.
33
. CM, July 26, 1946. The words are a paraphrase of Dahl's own.
34
. See Chapter 5, n. 21.
35
. See Chapter 5, n. 30.
36
.
OTY
, p. 74.
37
. Interview with Robert Gottlieb.
38
. Interview with Brough Girling.
39
. Quoted by Mike Coren in
The New Statesman
, August 26, 1983.
40
. Article by Sebastian Faulks in the
Daily Telegraph
, September 18, 1983; files of the
Literary Review
.
41
. For example, in a letter to
The Times
, September 19, 1983.
42
. See Chapter 5, n. 21.
43
.
Conversation with David Wolton. Dahl was a guest at the 1989 MAP dinner where Mona Bauwens, the daughter of a PLO leader, first met the Conservative minister David Mellor, a relationship that was later to force his resignation.
44
. See Malcolm Yapp's review in the
TLS
, August 26, 1983, where he argues with David Gilmour for saying this.
45
.
The Spectator
, September 3, 1983.
46
.
The New Statesman
, August 26, 1983.
47
. Letters to
The New Statesman
from Marion Woolfson, and from Sidney Goldwater, of the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women, September 2 and 16, 1983.
48
.
The New Republic
, October 31, 1983.
49
. One was Mort Levin, president of the Regent Book Company, New Jersey: FSG, December 19, 1983.
50
. See Chapter 3, n. 22.
51
. The letter was part of a project organized by Dinah Stroe, a teacher at Brandeis Hillel Day School, San Francisco, to whom, and to Vavi Toran, I am grateful for sending me copies of all the relevant material.
52
. Quoted in
The Northern California Jewish Bulletin
, March 3, 1990.
53
. Interview with Camilla Corbin.
54
. FSG, May 29, 1985.
55
. Puffin archive, RD to Barry Cunningham at Penguin, June 17, 1985.
56
. For example, in Puffin's promotional video for
Matilda
(Puffin archive).