Roald Dahl’s best book? Charlie and the Chocolate Factory combines wit and boundless imagination. Matilda, an iconic central character. But Danny the Champion of the World is the story with the most heart, and perhaps Dahl’s most personal.

Although very different in tone, Danny continues the work Dahl began with Fantastic Mr Fox, and the Magic Finger – taking a rural setting (using the countryside around his home in Great Missenden) and focusing on conflict between working class heroes and some truly awful landowners. 

Danny also follows Mr Fox with its representation of an heroic outlaw father. Perhaps un-coincidentally he is also a master storyteller. Additionally, Jeremy Treglown points out in his excellent warts and all biography that nocturnal poaching had been one of Dahl’s real hobbies. ‘In the early 1970s, the sport had developed an additional symbolic meaning for him, signalled by a warning which Danny gives to his readers:

“You will learn  as you get older, just as I learned that autumn, that no father is perfect, Grown-ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets… that would probably make you gasp if you knew about them.” 

In case you’re left with any doubt as to the author’s own feelings on parenting, he helpfully includes this concluding message.

The book saw the return of artist Jill Bennett, who had previously been commissioned by Puffin editor Kaye Webb to provide illustrations for Fantastic Mr Fox. Quentin Blake aside, I think her work is the best match for Dahl’s stories. She captures the emotion of the story perfectly, but also its excitement and humour – specifically the moment where hundreds of drugged pheasants wake up and escape from a Silver Cross pram. 

Unusually the book begins with a photograph – thought to be of Dahl as a baby, followed by a delightful portrait of a dishevelled Danny. But Bennett’s best known illustration arrives in chapter two and would provide the basis for one of Dahl’s best loved creations: The BFG. 

The text states that he is “three times as tall as an ordinary man,” with “hands as big as wheelbarrows.” But he proved difficult to pin down on paper. Like Quentin Blake after her, Jill took a long time getting her depiction of the Big Friendly Giant just right. The Roald Dahl archive at Great Missenden owns three of Jill’s trial sketches along with correspondence between the pair. 

Dahl was obviously happy with her vision as very few changes were requested, and further collaborations appeared likely had it not been for a mix up in contracts. In an alternate world it could’ve been Bennett’s vision and not Blake’s that provided the definitive look for his books.