‘And Children Swarmed to Him Like Settlers. He Became a Land.’

In 1990, the year of Roald Dahl’s death, a scene in the BBC comedy television series Smith and Jones showed the actor Griff Rhys Jones reading a story book at bedtime to his (real-life) daughter, then aged about three. The story became steadily more and more violent, nauseating and destructive of cherished sentimental stereotypes such as the loving grandmother. Jones the father appeared increasingly taken aback, uncertain, concerned, and his voice trailed off into worried puzzlement. Finally he looked at the book’s cover, and instantly his face changed to a beaming smile of understanding and reassured pleasure. ‘Oh, it’s by Roald Dahl!’ he said. It was a striking comment on the power of this name to create its own rules of engagement, and vindicate its own ostensible transgressions.