Roald Dahl: Phizz-Whizzing

Roald Dahl lived in a little town called Great Missenden. It has woods and hills and petrol pumps and a library. There’s even a real BFG – or there was. No, really, you’ll see. Roald liked big ideas and chocolate… lots of it! Roald chatted with a family friend and handyman called Wally Saunders and asked him if he’d build a writing hut.

That’s where some of his most famous stories were written. In 2011, Roald’s hut and all his precious mementoes from his life – even the dust on the floor – were moved piece-by-piece and rebuilt at the Roald Dahl Museum on Great Missenden High Street.

Roald inherited this armchair from his mother, Sofie Magdalene. He loved it, but found it uncomfortable because of an old spinal injury, so he cut a hole in the chair to make it more comfortable! Don’t try this at home, kids!

This writing board is covered in green baize, like a snooker table. Roald enjoyed playing snooker with his friends. He described the material as “soft on the eyes”.

The first thing Roald would do when he sat down in his writing chair was brush the board clean of dust and rubber eraser fragments. The brush is inscribed “R.DAHL” – it’s likely he first owned it back at school at Repton in Derbyshire.

Roald Dahl always used the same kind of yellow legal paper. In fact, yellow was his favourite colour. As well as writing with yellow-painted Dixon Ticonderoga HB #2 pencils on yellow paper, the door to his writing hut was yellow too. His literary magic poured from the pencil onto the page.

If only I can light upon one small corner of it [an idea], an edge, a seed. And if I am lucky enough to find it in the end, I don't pounce on it at once. I never do that. Instead, I keep my distance and walk around it slowly, sniffing at it with suspicion for several more days. Then, if in the end it still smells right, there comes a moment when I reach out and grab it and carry it up to my workhouse and start sharpening the pencils.” – Roald Dahl 

Quentin Blake is Roald Dahl’s most famous illustrator and loved the world over. Quentin first illustrated “The Enormous Crocodile” in 1978. After that, Roald and he formed a strong relationship and went on to work together on many other titles.

How did Roald Dahl become Roald Dahl, the world’s number one storyteller? Let’s go back in time… This is a reimagining of Roald’s schoolroom at Repton in Derbyshire. Roald was sent to boarding school in 1925, hated it, but still had to move to Repton when he was 13. At school, he saw cruelty and violence, which he wrote about in his book “Boy: Tales of Childhood”.

But he also fueled his taste for chocolate there, where the boys got to test new bars for the Cadbury’s factory. This reimagined room is from “The Wondercrump World of Roald Dahl”, a 2016 exhibition by the Southbank Centre celebrating Roald’s brilliant imagination.

Roald Dahl didn’t excel at school. There were no signs of a potential world-famous author. In fact, his school reports were often negative – one described him as a “persistent muddler, writing and saying the opposite of what he means”.

For 32 years, Roald Dahl wrote a letter a week to his mother. In 2016, they were compiled in a book, “Love From Boy”, edited by Donald Sturrock. Here you can see one of Roald’s handwritten letters, signed not as Roald but “Boy”.

Cadbury’s sent new chocolate bars to Repton for pupils to test. Roald imagined inventing a bar to amaze Mr Cadbury himself. His love of chocolate led to him writing a “History of Chocolate”, noting when all his favourite bars were first made, and his childhood ambitions inspired “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”.

Roald couldn’t wait to have adventures. After leaving school, he worked with the Shell Oil Company in London and Tanganyika (now Tanzania), giving him a chance to discover Africa. The animals he saw – giraffes, monkeys and enormous crocodiles – went on to feature in his famous children’s stories.

Roald was a big adventurer. He joined the RAF at the outbreak of the Second World War and in 1940 crashed in the Libyan Desert, sustaining injuries that affected him for the rest of his life. This is a recreation of the crash scene from the Southbank Centre’s “Wondercrump” exhibition.

Just think about his stories and you can see his love of flying in so many tales, including his first collection of stories for adults, “Over to You”, and the unforgettable “James and the Giant Peach” and “The Minpins” (his first and last books for children).

Roald Dahl’s famous stories have clear influences from his adventures and experiences. His adventures as a wartime pilot helped to turn him into a proper writer. His first published work was an account of his crash: “Shot Down Over Libya” for “The Saturday Evening Post”.

“Shot Down Over Libya” was commissioned to encourage pro-war feelings in the US at a time when America had only recently joined the Second World War. The heroic story of a young British pilot was made more exciting by adding the drama of an air battle, when the truth is Roald had to crash-land. Roald even acted as a spy during his time in the US.

Among RAF pilots, Gremlins were mythical creatures blamed for mechanical problems. Always looking and imagining, Roald caught them in the pages of his first book, “The Gremlins”, credited to Flight Lieutenant Roald Dahl, which began life as a film script idea for Walt Disney.

Locked away, behind a secret metal door, in a loft, Roald Dahl’s archive is preserved for all time. No one can get in there unless they have a golden ticket… and we have one. The secret door is at the Great Missenden Roald Dahl Story Centre. Inside are Roald’s working papers, ideas books, draft manuscripts, a lifetime of letters, RAF log book and special Roald stuff, including the red plastic box that held his after-dinner choccies.

That’s not one of the Grand High Witch’s books of spells: it’s the Polish edition of “James and the Giant Peach”. Roald Dahl’s books have been translated into 58 languages all over the world. In addition to English, Roald could speak Norwegian and Swahili.

In the 2005 film “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, all 165 Oompa Loompas were played by actor Deep Roy, who performed moves dozens of times in slightly different positions. Miniature robotic versions of Deep were built too, and now two of the robot Oompa Loompas live here.

This coat was made for Johnny Depp, who played Willy Wonka in Tim Burton’s 2005 film “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. Made with the support of Roald’s family, the film borrowed elements from Roald’s life – for example, Roald’s writing hut inspired the Bucket family home.

Can you guess what the boxes on these shelves contain? Something yellow… No, not gold… Well, a kind of storytelling gold. The boxes contain Roald’s handwritten notes and manuscripts on his favourite yellow paper, from first ideas to the finished books.

We go through a yellow door and into a special place: the Reading Room of the Roald Dahl Archive at the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre. Even though Roald is not physically in the room with us, there’s a feeling that his magic lives on in his handwritten and typed pages, and the objects hiding in here. You could walk past them without blinking an eye. Instead, stop and really look at them, like Roald used to.

This is the second draft of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, originally titled “Charlie’s Chocolate Boy”. The Charlie in this version accidentally becomes a chocolate boy, formed by a “boy-shaped mould” intended as a gift for Willy Wonka’s son, Freddie.

This is tortoise Alfie’s hut from the 2015 BBC adaptation of “Esio Trot”. Mr Hoppy (Dustin Hoffman) secretly adores his neighbour Mrs Silver (Judi Dench). He comes up with a way to make Alfie seem to grow, winning her love.

“Fantastic Mr Fox” translated into Finnish. Roald’s imagination excites children all over the world.

The striped cane belonging to Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (2005). It’s full of candy, but that’s because Willy Wonka made it, of course.

Perched on top of the cupboards is the top hat worn by Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (2005). He wouldn’t be seen out without it.

Willy Wonka’s secret ingredients flow through the pipes, behind the scenes. Just don’t get caught in the machinery or lost in boiling vats of chocolate!

Roald took inspiration from what he saw on his long walks around Great Missenden. The “Red Pump Garage” petrol station was the inspiration for the filling station in “Danny, the Champion of the World”. Nearby is Crown House, a timber-framed building that inspired Sophie’s “norphanage” in “The BFG”. 

This is the real library that Matilda used. While her boring mother played bingo, Matilda borrowed books from here that let her “travel all over the world while sitting in her little room.

The books Matilda works her way through include “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens, “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway, “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte, “Brighton Rock” by Graham Greene and “The Good Companions” by JB Priestley.

Though the library is proud of its Roald Dahl connection, it is still a real working library. It encourages children to follow Matilda’s example and go there to get lost in the amazing adventures and wild tales in its thousands of books.

Matilda Wormwood is a clever girl who has read all the books in the children’s library by the age of 4. Her teacher thinks she’s a genius, but her stupid parents don’t think so. Quentin Blake’s illustration really captures Matilda’s big character here!

This is a room from the Southbank Centre’s “The Wondercrump World of Roald Dahl”, bringing Sophie’s bedroom in “The BFG” into the real world. It contains several objects that link to the book – and guess who’s come to visit! Quentin Blake has drawn the BFG and Sophie too!

Sophie is an orphan, with no last name. She is “kidsnatched” from her bedroom in the orphanage by the BFG after spotting him outside blowing through a trumpet-like object into a window.

The BFG first appeared in “Danny, the Champion of the World” in a bedtime story told by Danny’s father. In both this version and in “The BFG”, the Big Friendly Giant catches dreams, sharing the good ones with sleeping children.

Roald’s friend Wally Saunders was a local handyman who built Roald’s writing hut. Wally was the real-life BFG. Roald’s method of writing was to take details he saw around him and exaggerate them: the tall, big-eared Wally was transformed into a giant with GINORMOUS ears!

Roald Dahl’s original description had the BFG wearing black leather boots, but he thought Quentin Blake’s BFG illustrations would look even more wonderful if he wore sandals. So Roald sent Quentin his traditional Norwegian sandals as an example.

At the other end of Sophie’s attic/bedroom, the BFG’s magic is spilling into the “norphanage”. His dream jars and dream trumpets are sending their energy to Sophie’s bed, delivering dreams to his favourite “chiddler”. “The Wondercrump World of Roald Dahl” brought this incredible interpretation of Roald’s BFG to life.

These are the jars in which the BFG would store captured dreams, ready to be shared with children.

The BFG’s dream blower is a kind of long, thin trumpet through which he blows the dreams he has mixed into the ears of sleeping children or “chiddlers”.

In early drafts of “The BFG”, the child in the story was a boy called Jody. Later versions saw Jody become Sophie, named after Roald's first grandchild, Sophie Dahl, who grew up to be a famous author and model.

Welcome to the house under the Tree! Say hello to Mr and Mrs Fox. You are on a set from director Wes Anderson’s 2009 stop-motion film “Fantastic Mr Fox”. It looks huge, but it is just over a metre square. Wes visited Great Missenden to get inspiration for the film. 

He included elements that were not in the published book: an earlier draft of Roald’s novel didn’t feature the evil farmers – Mr Fox stole from a supermarket instead. The supermarket appears towards the end of the film.

Mr Fox is a very clever fox who greatly annoys the farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean. Here he sits in his armchair with a board across his lap, just like Roald Dahl in his writing hut.

In the novel, Mrs Fox has no first name, but in the Wes Anderson film she is called Felicity – the name of Roald Dahl’s wife. In the film, her voice is provided by actress Meryl Streep.

Wes Anderson modeled the chair on Roald Dahl’s own – the fabric has a similar pattern. Another design element taken from the writing hut is the distinctive linoleum flooring.

What can you see on the table? There is an electric pencil sharpener modelled after Roald Dahl’s own. Before he sat down to write, Dahl would carefully sharpen 6 pencils so he could keep going if one broke or went blunt.

Like Roald Dahl, Mr Fox has an anglepoise lamp. However, Mr Fox’s appears to be in good condition, whereas Roald balanced his using a golf ball hung from a strip of Sellotape when the lamp springs stopped working.

Roald’s writing hut was filled with curiosities and personal objects and its walls were covered with clippings and photographs. Many of the items in Roald’s collection are linked to the people he cared most about, such as his wife Felicity (“Liccy”), granddaughter Sophie and dog Chopper...

...while others have echoes in his writing. Some are downright strange! Everything that can be seen here has something to tell us about Roald Dahl as a man and a writer.

Remember the shiny thing on the “Fantastic Mr Fox” set? Well, here’s the real thing! Ever since Repton, Roald had enjoyed a daily bar of chocolate. Roald crushed the foil wrappers from the chocolate into a ball that gradually grew and grew.

This is the ball joint from Roald Dahl’s femur, or thighbone, removed during hip-replacement surgery. Roald claimed the surgeon told him he had the biggest hipbone he had ever seen. There was definitely some BFGness in Roald Dahl!

In 1945, Roald was injured in the plane crash during the Second World War. This container holds shavings taken from his spine during operations to fix it. YUCK! You can see Roald’s fascination with weird things like this in his books, particularly some of his stories for adults.

Roald’s secretary Wendy gave him this model of a Hurricane fighter aeroplane, like the one he flew in the Second World War. She got it through collecting tokens from cereal boxes, telling Roald it was a gift that money couldn’t buy!

Roald Dahl prepared 6 yellow pencils to last him for 2 hours. There are 5 pencils in the toby jug here – the sixth is on his writing board. The exact kind of pencil Roald used was a Dixon Ticonderoga HB #2.

This is a scene from the end of the 2016 musical version of Roald Dahl’s deliciously dark tale “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, directed by Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes. The show played to more than 2 million people over 4 years at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, before moving to New York’s Broadway in 2017.

Shakespearean actor Jonathon Slinger plays Willy Wonka on stage in London. He says Hamlet and Macbeth were great preparation for taking on the character: “There is so much going on, both inside his head and in the way others see him.”

Ingenious stagecraft in “Charlie” presents amazing, seemingly impossible events before a live audience, including the squirrels in the nut-sorting room, Violet Beauregarde swelling into a gigantic blueberry and the great glass elevator flying through the sky.

Roald Dahl’s larger-than-life characters and gripping plots work wonderfully on stage. In recent years, many musicals and plays of Roald Dahl stories have wowed audiences the world over. “Matilda” the musical recently celebrated its fifth year on the West End in London and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” the musical will move to Broadway in 2017.