by Roald Dahl
‘My passion for chocolate did not really begin until I was fourteen or fifteen years old, and there was a good reason for this. Today chocolate-guzzling begins when the child is about five and it goes on with increasing intensity until the guzzler gets to be about twelve …
‘Things were different when I was young. The reason that neither I nor any of my generation developed the chocolate-guzzling bug early on was quite simply that in those days there were very few delicious chocolate bars available in the sweet-shops to tempt us. That’s why they were called sweet-shops and not chocolate-shops. Had I been born ten years later, it would have been another story, but, unfortunately for me, I grew up in the 1920s and the great golden years of the chocolate revolution had not yet begun.
‘When I was young, a small child going into the sweet-shop clutching his pocket money would be offered very little choice in the way of chocolate bars as we know them today. There was the Cadbury’s Bournville Bar and the Dairy Milk Bar. There was the Dairy Milk Flake (the only great invention so far) and the Whipped-cream Walnut … meagre pickings when you compare it with the splendid array of different chocolate bars that you see on display today.
‘Consequently, in those days we small boys and girls were much more inclined to spend our money either on sweets and toffees or on some of the many very cheap and fairly disgusting things … sherbet-suckers and gobstoppers and liquorice bootlaces and aniseed balls, and we did not mind that the liquorice was made from rat’s blood and the sherbet from sawdust. They were cheap and to us they tasted good. So on the whole, we made do with eating sweets and toffees and junk instead of chocolate.
‘Then came the revolution and the entire world of chocolate was suddenly turned upside-down in the space of seven glorious years between 1930 and 1937. Here’s a brief summary of what happened.
Cadbury’s began production of milk-bars, starting with the Dairy Milk Bar.
The plain one, the Bournville Bar, came five years later.
Then came the first great speciality chocolate bar, the Dairy Milk Flake. This was a milestone, the first time any manufacturer had started seriously playing around with chocolate in their Inventing Rooms.
Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut bar appeared on the market.
A chocolate manufacturing company called Frys invented the Crunchie.
Suddenly, a new company appeared called Mars. A young American man called Forrest Mars came to England and in a small laboratory in Slough he started experimenting with his father’s recipe for the Milky Way to make it better … and the Mars Bar was born … and very soon 600 million of them were being eaten every year in England alone.
Black Magic assorted chocolates appeared in boxes.
The lovely Aero was introduced.
Don’t forget Forrest Mars. In spite of the phenomenal success of his Mars Bar, this genius was still experimenting in his laboratory and came up with another classic beauty – Maltesers. In the same year, Quality Street was also put on to the market.
Another golden year during which monumental classic lines were invented: Kit Kat, Rolo and Smarties.’
And – for all you chocolate-guzzlers – they are all still available in the shops today!
He was very tall – six feet five and three-quarter inches, or nearly two metres. His nickname in the RAF was Lofty, while Walt Disney called him Stalky (because he was like a beanstalk!).
He was a terrible speller, but he liked playing Scrabble.
His nickname at home was the Apple, because he was the apple of his mother’s eye (which means her favourite!).
He pretended to have appendicitis when he was nine because he was so homesick in his first two weeks at boarding school. He fooled the matron and the school doctor and was sent home. But he couldn’t fool his own doctor, who made him promise never to do it again.
He didn’t like cats – but he did like dogs, birds and goats.
Roald Dahl wrote the screenplay for the James Bond film You Only Live Twice.
He was a keen photographer at school and, when he was eighteen, won two prizes: one from the Royal Photographic Society in London and another from the Photographic Society of Holland.
In the churchyard at Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, big friendly giant footprints lead to Roald Dahl’s grave.
Best of all were the summer holidays. From the time he was four years old to when he was seventeen, Roald and his family went to Norway every summer. There were no commercial aeroplanes in those days, so the journey was a splendid expedition. It took four days to get there, and four days to get back again! The sea crossing from Newcastle to Oslo lasted two days and a night – and Roald was generally seasick.
Finally, they would reach what Roald Dahl called ‘the magic island’, the island of Tjøme in a Norwegian fjord. The family would swim and sunbathe, mess about in rock pools, and go fishing. When Roald was seven, his mother acquired a motor boat and they could explore other islands.
‘We would cling to the sides of our funny little white motor boat, driving through mountainous white-capped waves and getting drenched to the skin, while my mother calmly handled the tiller. There were times, I promise you, when the waves were so high that as we slid down into a trough the whole world disappeared from sight … It requires great skill to handle a small boat in seas like these … But my mother knew exactly how to do it, and we were never afraid.’
‘I find August in England a rather torpid month. The trees and plants have all done their growing for the year and nature is hanging motionless in suspension before sinking slowly into the decline of winter. There is a brownish look to the countryside and the leaves are hanging heavy on the trees. But if it is nothing else, it is the month of the butterfly. Butterflies are lovely things. They do no harm to man himself either by stinging, biting or spreading disease. Nor are they beneficial to man as the silkworm is or the honeybee. The large white or cabbage butterfly is the only one that is a nuisance because it lays eggs on your cabbages and these hatch out into horrid hungry caterpillars …
‘August is, by the way, the month when young adders are born in heathy, hilly places, and baby grass snakes emerge from their eggs in rotting leaves and old compost heaps. It is the month when hedgehogs have their litters of babies, all born blind and helpless, and I’m afraid it is also the month when wasps come on the warpath, stinging humans in great numbers.’
‘At the age of eight I became a mad diary enthusiast … I was a bit of a loner in those days and a bit of a dreamer and some of the things I wrote down for the next five or six years were thoughts that I don’t think I would have dared even to speak out aloud to myself. That’s the beauty of writing. You find that you can actually write things down that are quite outlandish and outrageous and you feel all the better for it.’
‘I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.’
‘I have always loved this month. As a schoolboy I loved it because it is the Month of the Conker … We all know, of course, that a great conker is one that has been sorted in a dry place for at least a year. This matures it and makes it rock hard and therefore very formidable. We also know about the short cuts that less dedicated players take to harden their conkers. Some soak them in vinegar for a week. Others bake them in the oven at a low temperature for six hours. But such methods are not for the true conker player. No world-champion conker has ever been produced by short cuts …
‘The best conker I ever had was a conker 109, and I can still remember that frosty morning in the school playground when my one-o-nine was finally shattered by Perkins’s conker 74 in an epic contest that lasted over half an hour. After it, I felt even more shattered than my conker!’
When Roald was sixteen, he decided to go off on his own to holiday in France. He crossed the Channel from Dover to Calais with £24 in his pocket (a lot of money in 1933). Roald wante
d to see the Mediterranean Sea, so he took the train first to Paris, then on to Marseilles where he got on a bus that went all the way along the coastal road towards Monte Carlo. He finished up at a place called St Jean Cap Ferrat and stayed there for ten days, wandering around by himself and doing whatever he wanted. It was his first taste of absolute freedom – and what it was like to be a grown-up.
He travelled back home the same way but, by the time he reached Dover, he had absolutely no money left. Luckily a fellow passenger gave him ten shillings (50p in today’s money!) for his tram fare home. Roald never forgot this kindness and generosity.
When Roald was seventeen he signed up to go to Newfoundland, Canada, with ‘The Public Schools’ Exploring Society’. Together with thirty other boys, he spent three weeks trudging over a desolate landscape with an enormous rucksack. It weighed so much that he needed someone to help him hoist it on to his back every morning. The boys lived on pemmican (strips of pressed meat, fat and berries) and lentils, and they experimented with eating boiled lichen and reindeer moss because they were so hungry. It was a genuine adventure and left Roald fit and ready for anything!
Butterscotch
You will need:
large saucepan
large jug
whisk
cling film
25 g butter
25 g caster sugar
25 g golden syrup
600 ml fat-free milk
75 ml natural yoghurt
Makes approx 3–4 mugs
How to make:
In a saucepan, over a low heat, melt together the butter, sugar and golden syrup, stirring all the time until the sugar has dissolved (about ten minutes). Add a little milk to the pan, then transfer to a jug.
Whisk in a little more milk, approx 50 ml, followed by all of the yoghurt.
Whisk in the remaining milk.
Cover with cling film. Chill before serving.
Please ask a grown-up to help you when you are handling anything hot.
‘This, like September, is a lovely month, mild and misty and smelling of ripe apples. We have a small orchard at the back of our house … there was so much fruit every autumn that I told all the children in the village they could come in at any time and ask to borrow a ladder and pick what they wanted. They came in droves …
‘During October swarms of migrant birds cross the North Sea from Scandinavia to our shores. Some, like starlings and blackbirds and thrushes and rooks and jackdaws, will stay here for the winter. Others, like the skylarks and goldcrests and finches, will rest before going on south to spend the winter in Africa …
‘At this time of year our hedges are covered with old man’s beard and woody nightshade. Hips and haws make splashes of crimson everywhere. In the grassy banks on either side, an enormous number of different wild flowers and ferns grow. On weekends I see groups of enthusiastic botanists from London hunting for rare specimens. They walk slowly up the lane peering into the banks and calling to one another when they find something interesting. I like these people. I like enthusiasts of any kind.’
How many new kinds of chocolate bar has Mr Willy Wonka invented?
What did Prince Pondicherry ask Willy Wonka to do?
How do the chocolates and sweets come out of Mr Wonka’s factory?
Why does Violet Beauregarde turn into a gigantic blueberry?
How many Golden Tickets are there altogether?
Who finds the second Golden Ticket?
What does Violet Beauregarde do all day?
What does Mike Teavee like doing best?
In what kind of chocolate bar does Charlie find his Golden Ticket?
What sort of coat does Willy Wonka wear?
Where are the most important rooms in Willy Wonka’s factory?
How is the chocolate mixed?
What happens to Augustus Gloop?
What is Willy Wonka’s private yacht made from?
Which is the most important room in the whole factory?
Who pushes Veruca Salt down the rubbish chute?
Why is the lift so special?
What happens when Willy Wonka presses the UP AND OUT button in the lift?
What does Mike Teavee look like when he leaves the factory?
What present does Willy Wonka decide to give Charlie?
Turn to page 118 for the answers –
if you really have to!
‘November is the middle of what we used to call the Christmas term. I had my first Christmas term away from home when I was eight years old. And it is also the month of fireworks and Guy Fawkes. Oh, how we used to look forward to the fifth of November at boarding school … We had jackie jumpers, Roman candles, crack-bangers, fire-serpents, big bombers, rockets and golden rain!
‘There is a badger’s earth in the wood above our house, and this month the badgers are busy digging their deep winter quarters and lining them with dry leaves for warmth. Before November is out, they will have blocked up the entrances to their holes and will sleep the winter through. Like the badgers, the grass snakes are all starting to hibernate, but they are not as domesticated as the badgers. They have no real homes and simply hide themselves among the twisted tree roots underneath the hedges, and quite often they will coil themselves around each other for comfort. For many small animals, the approach of winter means the time to go to sleep until spring arrives again. It would make life a lot more comfortable if we could do the same!’
‘The job of a children’s writer is to try to write a book that is so exciting and fast and wonderful that the child falls in love with it.’
Have you got what it takes to be an author? You might well have – it’s just that you don’t know it yet!
Believe it or not, Roald Dahl only found out he could write by accident. At the age of twenty-six he was ‘discovered’ by C. S. Forester, author of the Captain Horatio Hornblower stories. From that moment, he never stopped writing.
But it’s not easy. These are the qualities Roald Dahl suggested you will need if you are going to become a writer:
‘You should have a lively imagination.
You should be able to write well. By that I mean you should be able to make a scene come alive in the reader’s mind.
You must have stamina. In other words, you must be able to stick to what you are doing and never give up.
You must be a perfectionist. That means you must never be satisfied with what you have written until you have rewritten it again and again, making it as good as you possibly can.
You must have strong self-discipline.
It helps a lot if you have a keen sense of humour.
You must have a degree of humility. The writer who thinks that his work is marvellous is heading for trouble.’
Point 4 is crucial. Roald Dahl spent many months writing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and, as you know, there was a first draft, then a second, then a third, and so on. Some bits were added in, other bits taken out. With each rewrite, the story would get better and better.
‘One Christmas, when I was about nine or ten, I had been given a fine Meccano set as my main present, and I decided I would make a device that was capable of ‘bombing’ from the air the pedestrians using the public footpath across our land.
‘Briefly my plan was as follows: I would stretch a wire all the way from the high roof of our house to the old garage on the other side of the footpath. Then I would construct from my Meccano a machine that would hang from the wire by a grooved wheel and this machine would hopefully run down the wire at great speed dropping its bombs on the unwary walkers underneath.
‘Next morning, filled with the enthusiasm that grips all great inventors, I climbed on to the roof of our house by the skylight and wrapped one end of the long roll of wire around a chimney. I threw the rest of the wire into the garden below and went back down myself through the skylight. I carried the wire across the garden, over the fence, across the footpath, over the next fence and into our land on the other side. I now pulled the wire very tigh
t and fixed it with a big nail to the top of the door of the old garage. So far so good.
‘Next I set about constructing from the Meccano my bombing machine, or chariot as I called it. I put the wheel at the top, and then running down from the wheel I made a strong column about two feet long (a metre). At the lower end of this column, I fixed two arms that projected outwards at right angles, one on either side, and along these arms I suspended five empty Heinz soup tins. The whole thing looked something like this:
‘… I filled all the soup tins with water. I lay flat on the roof waiting for a victim. Soon two ladies dressed in tweed skirts and jackets and each wearing a hat, came strolling up the path with a revolting little Pekinese dog on a lead. I knew I had to time this carefully, so when they were very nearly but not quite directly under the wire, I let my chariot go. Down she went, making a wonderful screeching-humming noise as the metal wheel ran down the wire and the string ran through my fingers at great speed. Bombing from a height is never easy. I had to guess when my chariot was directly over the target, and when that moment came, I jerked the string. The chariot stopped dead and the tins swung upside down and all the water tipped out. The ladies, who had halted and looked up on hearing the rushing noise of my chariot overhead, caught the cascade of water full in their faces. It was tremendous. A bulls-eye first time. The women screamed. I lay flat on the roof so as not to be seen, peering over the edge, and I saw the women shouting and waving their arms. Then they came marching straight into our garden through the gate at the back and crossed the garden and hammered on the door. I nipped down smartly through the skylight and did a bunk.