To coincide with World Book Day this week, I thought I would share with you my love for books. When I was younger (much younger!), I used to love reading Roald Dahl books – and now my kids love reading them. How wonderful is that!
Recently, we visited the Roald Dahl Museum in Great Missenden and it was a lovely day out. (By the way, I am not being sponsored to write this post – I just like Roald Dahl a lot). It is a tiny, cosy, quaint museum which can easily be covered in 2 hours and leave enough time for the scrumdiddlyumptious homemade cakes and a cup of tea in The Twits Cafe. It even houses the famous writing hut where Dahl wrote all his books.
It wasn’t just my kids that learnt a lot about the great man, but I learnt quite a few things myself…
Did you know that Roald Dahl’s favourite book of his was ‘The BFG’?
Did you know that he was a WWII fighter pilot who needed 6 operations on his spine after a crash in the desert?
Did you know that he was a James Bond style secret spy in America?
Did you know that he wrote the screenplay for the Bond movie ‘You Only Live Twice’?
Did you know that he helped invent the Wade-Dahl-Till valve which helped drain fluid from the brain?
Did you know that he loved chocolate, but not chocolate cake or chocolate ice-cream?
Was there anything that he could not do?!
What I love most about him is that his inspiration came from his everyday life experiences and adventures. He would just use his memory to exaggerate some of the truth and turn it into magic. For example, he was sent to lots of unpleasant boarding schools with strict teachers that inspired ‘Matilda’. At one of these schools, Cadbury would send boxes of chocolate to get tasted. This is where Dahl took inspiration for my favourite book of his, ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’.
Being a chocoholic myself, I adored the idea of winning a golden ticket to visit a chocolate factory where you could bump into all singing, all dancing Oompa Loompas from Loompaland, a rich river of gloriumptious melted chocolate and lickswishy everlasting gobstoppers! Mmmmm….bliss!
“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” Roald Dahl
A MishMash Life 