Roald Dahl: Continually Strange

The perpetual favorite writer of my childhood, Roald Dahl remains probably my biggest overall creative influence. And though I hold no aspirations to being a Dahl expert or would-be biographer, I know a lot about his life and work. Still, even with your absolute favorites, there are still new discoveries to be made that you've yet to encounter.

Por ejemplo:


1 - I guess in the UK they're going to make an entire 52-episode TV series about the Dahl book The Enormous Crocodile. That is a shit load of episodes based on what I think is essentially a single picture book. At least they're coping the look of the show off nearly ubiquitous Dahl artist Quentin Blake, and I remember seeing some shorts based on the pairs work animated a few years ago that was at least pretty to watch.

2 - So Roald Dahl's granddaughter, who was the basis for the lead in The B.F.G. is now a foxy British supermodel.


But wait, it gets better. Aside from her longstanding and successful modeling career, Sophie Dahl is also married to a millionaire jazz musician (they apparently still have these in Europe?) named Jamie Cullum. The pair's combined wealth is something like £5 to 10 million. And so when Sophie made a public plea for fans of her late grandfather to donate up to £500,000 to help save the little hut where he wrote the majority of his stories, people united to tear her a new one:

Actor and writer Nicholas Pegg wrote on Twitter: 'Top model (& Jamie Cullum's wife) Sophie Dahl wants us to raise £0.5 million to save her bestselling grandpa's shed. Am I missing something?'

He later posted: 'A preposterously wealthy family pleading for cash for its legacy? It sounds like a lost Dahl story!'

Journalist Matthew Sweet joined the chorus of criticism, saying: 'Have I got this wrong? The international model and TV star Sophie Dahl is asking US for money to restore a shed?'

There's a lot more in that link, including photos of the author, the hut, angry Tweets, models and some kind of crazy witchcraft lab.

Dahl would've been 95 earlier this month.