![]() ![]() Last year it was adapted again, this time by director Robert Zemeckis. It has already been adapted to film once, in Nicolas Roeg’s excellent 1990 effort – one of the final productions produced by Jim Henson. It is in effect a horror novel for young children: placing its child protagonist in terrible danger, relating some incidents and concepts that are remarkably challenging for the book’s age group, and boasting a bleak plot that sits uncomfortably among the ‘happy ever after’ conclusions of most other works of its kind. To my mind, Dahl’s 1983 novel The Witches is one of his best. ![]() His personal legacy is an uncomfortable mixture of immense creativity laced with accusations of misogyny and antisemitism, but his literary works – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG, and many others – inspire new readers as well as Hollywood adaptations every year. The late Roald Dahl continues to leave a long shadow over children’s fiction, decades after his death. ![]()
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