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“... to read an authorised biography? So take Jeremy Treglown’s apologia at the beginning of his Dahl biography with a pinch of salt. Ophelia Dahl plans to write the authorised version of her father’s life, with the approval of his second wife, Felicity, who asked friends and relatives not to co-operate with any other ...”

“... The publisher’s note on the jacket of George’s Marvellous Medicine says that ‘Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was voted No 1 (above Winnie the Pooh, Lord of the Rings and Alice in Wonderland) in a Sunday Times survey to find the best ten children’s books.’ Even if the word ‘best’ is translated into reasonable terms (‘currently most popular’?), the claim remains impressive, and implies classic status ...”

“... What strange classification can bracket such diversity, from nursery tales to the blackest crimes? Roald Dahl offers a clue in The Witches, where he suggests that real witches don’t wear pointy hats and ride broomsticks but look normal. They are insatiably vicious yet hard to detect. ‘If only there were a way of telling for sure whether a woman was a ...”

“... than three masterpieces, the Rolo, the Kit Kat and Smarties. All British inventions. According to Roald Dahl: ‘In music, the equivalent would be the golden age of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. In painting, it was the equivalent of the Italian Renaissance and the advent of Impressionism at the end of the 19th century; in literature, Tolstoy, Balzac and ...”

“... has remained to my mind ever since it first appeared one of the best books of our century.’ To Roald Dahl: ‘I have just finished reading Boy with immense pleasure and great horror.’ To Brian Moore: ‘I always remember our evening together at the amusing strip-tease joint which has since been closed down!’ Clearly, he enjoyed his bit of ...”

“... universe, but also suggests a kinship between Saki and the writer most associated with Blake: Roald Dahl. Saki, photographed by E.O. Hoppé in 1913. Certainly, Dahl’s barbed energy owed a great deal to Saki. There is a brilliant but wicked little girl called Matilda in Saki’s ‘The Boar-Pig’, who ...”

“... Henry Green put in an incongruous cameo appearance in Jeremy Treglown’s 1994 biography of Roald Dahl. When an interviewer from the Houston Post asked the bestselling author of the low-life and hilarious ‘adult’ short-story collection Someone like You who his favourite British writer was, he answered loftily: ‘Henry Green ...”

“... to tell. John Wain has not been forgiven for patronising Amis early on, and both Enoch Powell and Roald Dahl might have been rendered more benignly if, when given the chance, they had evinced a surer grasp of Kingsley’s stature. When Andrew Sinclair and James Michie are sniped at for being mean, for not picking up the tab, we get the feeling that ...”

“... benevolence. The last sentence is a master’s work. Children of course love such things; and Roald Dahl and other professionals of ‘black’ fairy stories have exploited the fact – but they lack the style which goes with a certain inner horrifyingness. T.H. White was, after all, a fairly peculiar and unhappy man, for whom writing was a ...”

“... adult has reason to be grateful to Maschler. Children, too: it was his inspiration to pair up Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake. His thumbprints are everywhere on British literary culture. It is evident from letters quoted in his book that Maschler inspires loyalty and affection from his authors – not least from Blake, who has illustrated Publisher ...”

“... fell, she and other officials sailed to England on the MS Batory, the Polish liner that would take Roald Dahl to America two years later. Stefan, left behind, enlisted in the Polish 3rd Infantry Division, a Fred Karno’s army, untrained, largely unarmed, and kitted out in the horizon-blue uniforms the French had mothballed twenty years earlier. Three ...”

“... Matilda the Musical​, adapted from Roald Dahl, opens with what might be described as the paradox of maternal recognition. A troupe of hideously grimacing children sing ‘My Mummy says I’m a miracle’ in such a way as to suggest that they are monsters while Matilda, who really is miraculous in that she has magic powers, fails to be recognised by her parents ...”

“... In Roald Dahl’s​ ‘The Great Automatic Grammatisator’ (1952), a couple of jaded men design a computerised writing machine with the aim of cornering the market in magazine short stories. All the ‘author’ has to do is press a button (‘historical, satirical, philosophical, political, romantic, erotic, humorous or straight’) and choose a style (‘classical, whimsical, racy, Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, feminine etc’), and the machine will do the rest ...”