Happy 50th Birthday Charlie Bucket

Karen Hart

I’m 52 and it feels like the book has permeated much of my life over its 50 whipple-scrumptious years.

I saw a delicious tribute the other day at Waterstone’s Piccadilly:  an amazing creation of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, made with 200kg of sugar, by the awesome Biscuiteers. I loved the way it filled the window; for passers-by to press their noses against the glass much as Charlie does early in the book, 'his mouth watering like mad.'

The ginormous sweet factory struck a chord with me and brought back memories of first reading the book as an isolated kid, much like Charlie. Think of me now more like Augustus Gloop, channeling Proust's madeleine. Chocolate or industrial-size biscuit aside, I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate than by reading it again. 

I have a sweet tooth to rival Dahl himself; my parents were wartime kids living with rationing and Dad in particular always saw sweets, especially chocolate, as the ultimate treat. I didn't grow up in in a house with books. There’d be one or two as Christmas or birthday gifts, usually from an auntie: either Mum's sister or a holder of the honorary title of all female neighbours and family friends back in the Dark Ages. 

The only other book-buying occasion came after a visit to the dentist. Drooling from a mouthful of fillings or extractions, I would be rewarded with, yes, a bag of sweets or bar of chocolate - and being allowed to choose a book. That's when I got my copy of Charlie and it's almost worth the dental horrorshow that is my teeth for the irony. Last weekend, I was back in exactly the same place as in the photo: me, at seven or eight, in bed. The wallpaper, bed and lamp have changed models but not their position and the same teddy bear is in the same place. It's where I read Charlie for the first time. 

On this, the nth time, the book was on a Kindle. I revel in Quentin Blake’s lines and curves that capture the characters with such simple elegance in today's illustrations. But the pictures of Charlie, Grandpa Joe and the rest of Dahl's world that still come to my mind were drawn by Michael Foreman: that was MY edition, which is sadly long lost.

It went on to be one of my comfort books, to be re-read when I need that unique blend of mordant humour and deft lightness of touch. When I was 14, I spent several weeks in an isolation hospital far from home. No books were allowed there and, when I came back, Charlie was one of the few stories I could face. I read it over and over, stuck in my bedroom for weeks, during a horrible time of being weak and helpless but satisfied at a happy ending which felt correct without being twee or unlikely.

I went back to it again, in the mid-80s, when I was one of a press pack trying to grab a word with Dahl at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court. He was a witness in defence of a young man accused of assaulting police. ‘Fangirl’ hadn’t been invented but I have to admit to my tough reporter facade being fairly lost for words at coming face to face with Charlie’s author. Or, more accurately, gazing up and up at him. I’m not sure I would be much different today but I don’t think my eight-year-old self would have been.

There’s another reason I feel a kinship with Dahl and Charlie, which sent me back to the Chocolate Factory in my early 30s. I discovered a Swedish birth family and spent time finding not only a new father (with an even greater love of chocolate) but also Dahl-loving half siblings who were reading Charlie to their children, and the dark forests, short days and pragmatism that I believe infuse writing rooted in a Scandinavian background.

In five drafts spanning four years, Dahl perfected a protagonist in Charlie Bucket who still speaks to me much as he did when I first met him. By the way, if you want to see those drafts, there’s a special archive tour on Sunday 15 June at the Roald Dahl Museum.

It’s part of Gloop’s Glumptious Weekend, which is unsurprisingly chocolate-focused. Oh, just typing the words ‘Gloops’s Glumptious Weekend ‘is ridiculously enjoyable. I wanted to try to write this in Dahl-style, with lots of fun invented words but gave up after about ten seconds. I don’t have the imagination or the humour and he’s already done it all anyway.

All those of us who love him, and the readers yet to meet Charlie Bucket, will make sure that he’ll be around for a lot longer than the next 50 years.

Happy Birthday, Charlie.

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@KarenJKhart

Karen Hart has written facts for a lifetime in journalism and public relations, from news updates at the aftermath of bombs to features on vanishing rural
crafts. Now she's writing a MG novel and working for herself, supported by her husband, teenage daughter and two cats. She divides her time between London, the seaside and seven Swedish half-siblings. 

She is a digital immigrant turned native, addicted to social media and running six Twitter accounts. Karen is the only volunteer on the Writeidea reading festival committee and a member of the Golden Egg academy. There are two YA manuscripts in her drawer.

My Little Hut

As part of our celebrations for the fiftieth birthday of Charlie and Chocolate Factory, Sandra Greaves takes a peek into Roald Dahl’s famous writing hut. 

The places where writers write are often intriguing. Roald Dahl’s writing hut is downright irresistible. With two tiny rooms, it was only just big enough for the 6ft 5’ giant of a man and a handful of furniture. Yet it was his workplace for 30 years.

Roald Dahl in his writing hut, circa 1990 © Jan Baldwin

Dahl had visited Dylan Thomas’s writing shed at Laugharne in the 1950s, and it inspired him to build his own in the orchard of Gipsy Cottage, his house at Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire. The little hut gave him a private space to work, and an escape from childcare when his Hollywood actress wife Pat was away. ‘There’s no doubt that babies are charming,’ he told his agent’s assistant, Sheila St Lawrence, ‘but they do bugger up the quiet and routine necessary for work.’

Dahl adored his hut and wrote in its back room for four hours every day – two in the morning before lunch (Norwegian prawns, half a lettuce and a Kit Kat) and two following his afternoon nap. ‘When I am in this little place, it’s lovely, and you can lose yourself in your work,’ he said. ‘It is my little nest, my womb.’ A former fighter pilot, he also compared it to the cockpit of a Hurricane – a place where his mind had the freedom to soar.

Once inside the hut, Dahl would sharpen his six pencils for the day, draw the curtains and sit in his wing-backed armchair – hollowed out to accommodate a spinal injury from his flying days – with a blanket over him and his feet in a sleeping bag when it was cold. An Anglepoise lamp shone a little light onto his writing board. Ensconced there, he would slip into the world of the imagination. ‘I go down to my little hut, where it’s tight and dark and warm,’ he told his biographer, Donald Sturrock, ‘and within minutes I can go back to being six or seven or eight again.’

The front room stored Dahl’s papers in two wooden cabinets, one of them with a grisly handle made out of a steel prosthesis from an unsuccessful hip operation.

The front room stored Dahl’s papers in two wooden cabinets, one of them with a grisly handle made out of a steel prosthesis from an unsuccessful hip operation. In the back room, Dahl kept his favourite pencils, his lined yellow US legal pads for writing, and a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ that included shavings of his spine floating in a glass vial, fragments of Babylonian pottery and a metal ball he had made out of the wrappers of hundreds of chocolate bars. Donald Sturrock describes everything as ‘yellow with nicotine and reeking of tobacco’, with ‘a carpet of pencil sharpenings and cigarette ash’ covering the linoleum floor.

Mostly Dahl was left to himself in his hut. He discouraged the children from visiting by telling them it was inhabited by wolves, though his granddaughter, Sophie Dahl, remembers occasionally being allowed to bring him a gin and tonic and stand outside on the step as he drank it. There were other visitors too – in the early days of the hut, Dahl described the cows ‘licking the windowpanes from time to time and eating the curtains if the windows were open’.

Amazingly, it’s all still there. After Dahl’s death in 1990, the hut was saved for new generations of fans and reconstructed in the nearby Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in Great Missenden. You can see it online or in its wood and polystyrene flesh - including cigarette butts in the ashtray and Dahl’s beloved ball of chocolate wrappers. How whizzpoppingly awesome is that?

© The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre

Celebrated SCBWI sheds

SCBWI South West organiser Lesley Moss is another fan of sheds – she’s worked in one for the last three years. ‘It’s like a beach hut!’ she says. ‘In the garden! Through the window I see trees and telegraph poles, coppery leaves, clouds. A twisty hazel twirls in front of the door - the sound of rain pattering on the roof makes me feel I’m in my own magic world: I’m outside in the garden, but inside my den too.’

So what does Lesley think about fellow shed writers?

‘Authors who work in sheds are lucky, whether yours be a shack, hut, or a palace of delights. And I think for children’s authors it’s especially appropriate, because the very act of entering your outdoor space instantly transports you back to the sheer fun of childhood den building, and how exciting that felt, and all the imaginary worlds and adventures that exist and start there. So you access your own childhood mind.’

Since moving to The Shed, Lesley has extracted her WIPs from the writhing clutter of the kitchen table, and they are so grateful to be rescued, they are practically writing themselves. She’s hoping they’ll edit and submit themselves too while they’re about it. Read her blog here.

Exterior of Lesley's Shed

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@sandra_greaves

Sandra Greaves is one of the winners of SCBWI’s Undiscovered Voices 2012. Her first novel, The Skull in the Wood, was nominated for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2014.