14 Aug 2006
Wow! I’ve just spent the afternoon at Roald Dahl’s house, home to his extremely hospitable widow Liccy. We were filming a news item for Roald Dahl day (13 September) about our forthcoming production of DANNY THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD. It was a gentle afternoon so we had time to chat to Liccy, play with the dog and his ball, eat delicious brownies and drink copious amounts of tea!
But the special moment came when Liccy allowed us to enter Dahl’s ‘hut’ – a small brick building where he wrote most of his work. It stands exactly as he left it in 1990; the cigarette stubs still lie in the ashtray. I would liken it to finding the house where Tolstoy wrote his novels. For here was where some of English literature’s greatest characters were born. Charlie and his Chocolate Factory, George and his Marvellous Medicine, The BFG and his Wizzpoppers…. There were goosebumps on my arms as I stood in this small room and thought of everything that had been created by the man who once sat in that old chair.
The universal legacy of the human race still puzzles me – I doubt anything will be excited about our creations except other humans. But as a human being, it was genuinely awe inspiring to get close to something so special – and something that had played such an important part in my personal and professional life.