Let’s get rid of January and have another July
The museum is home to all the versions of Roald Dahl stories.
I am not going to tie myself into the knots that publisher Penguin got into when they announced the release of Classic Editions of Roald Dahl’s Books. Instead, this week’s newsletter is a serendipitous meeting of the controversial with the anodyne.
I was heading to the flushbunkingly glorious Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in Great Missenden for a reading and launch of a limited edition of The BFG. The museum is on the very high street that the BFG slid down, stopping to peer into the windows as the children slept in their upstairs bedrooms. An expressive reading, but the conversation of course touched on what was all over the news; “The museum is home to all the versions of Roald Dahl stories” said museum director Steve Gardam, steering us back to the reason we were there!
A celebration of a Micro Year
Encouraged to browse the well-stocked shop, I was drawn to another, less contentious limited edition called My Year. First published in 1992, his last book records what he saw and heard about him in the Buckinghamshire countryside; trying to deter magpie’s from picking off nesting blackbirds, the arrival of the cuckoo, the velvet-skinned ‘not very attentive husband’ garden moles tunnelling under his lawn, interspersed with childhood memories. I especially like his idea of substituting January for another July. I’d go with that!
Like me, he was searching for inspiration in the world around him. Is this something that you do? What have you found?
“The museum is home to all the versions of Roald Dahl stories” said museum director Steve Gardam, “and My Year is part memoir, part field guide”.
Pick up a copy of the new limited edition The BFG or a copy of the wonderful My Year from the Roald Dahl Museum shop.
Links you will need
Enjoy a phizz-whizzing welcome when you visit Roald Dahl Museum & Story Centre, based in the village where he lived and wrote some of his best work for over 36 years.
There used to be free leaflets to guide you around the village, taking in Matilda’s bistro, the Red Pump Garage or up the high street to Angling Wood to find the Fantastic Mr Fox. You could ask at the museum if these are still available.
Explore the delightful market town of Great Missenden and visit a striking viking grave.