Fan of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Join Lucy Mangan for webchat, 10 September, 9-10pm

[RachelMumsnet]

Author and PPA Columnist of the Year Lucy Mangan is joining us on Wednesday 10 September between 9 and 10pm for a webchat about her latest book, Inside Charlie's Chocolate Factory.

Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Charlie, Lucy has delved deep into the archive to present the story behind Roald Dahl's best-loved classic. Bringing together rare extracts, unseen characters and early designs from the book, as well as behind-the-scenes photographs and actors? personal accounts from both stage and screen adaptations, Mangan explores the cultural impact of one of the most widely loved children?s stories of all time.

She will be taking your questions about all things Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on the evening of Wednesday 10th September, including why there were originally ten children in the factory and why some chapters didn't make the cut. Save the date or post your questions or thoughts on the book to Lucy on this thread and watch this space for info about some great prizes to be won during the webchat.

[LucyMangan]

@JuJuHeyHey

Hi Lucy,

I was thinking about the research you did for the book - I hope it was both as fun as the book is and as interesting as Dahl's life appeared to be. My question is, did you discover anything which made you sit back in surprise or jump up and down and hug yourself with glee? I'm hoping for a little golden nugget of a fact you loved finding out about!

Looking forward to all your answers and reading the book.

The fact that he hated Creme Eggs gave me pause. I don't...I don't understand how this can be.
I knew the basic outline of the event before I began, but the story of him inventing, along with his friend Stanley Wade and his son Theo Dahl's neurosurgeon Kenneth Till, a new, better shunt to drain the fluid from around the brains of children with hydrocephalus stuns me anew every time.
Hope you enjoy the book!

[TheNightIsDark]

Do you think that Dahl felt that the Gene Wilder movie portrayed his book well? It must be utterly bizarre seeing people portray your creations and them possibly not matching up to your creations!

Also, do you feel that the great glass elevator was a worthy sequel? I remember being bitterly disappointed with it as a child.

[LucyMangan]

@fuzzpig

Oh and best wishes to your vomiting child (I would do the [ cake ] emoticon but that seems like a bad idea)

thank you - all seems well so far. He did go to bed saying piteously how hungry he was. Heartbreaking. But we've no bed linen left, so I can't have him be sick tonight.
I've got brownies downstairs.

[LucyMangan]

@Starlingsintheslipstream

Which film version do you prefer? I love the Gene Wilder version as it was part of my childhood but when I saw the Tim Burton adaptation it struck me how faithful it was to the book. So, I'm undecided

Starlingsintheslipstream - I love the GW version – the Depp one leaves me cold. Perfectly enjoyable, faithful to the events in the book but not to the spirit, I think. Dahl hated the 1971 film, BTW, especially the ending (sentimental, he thought) but – what can I say? I don’t feel the same, and of course it’s become massively popular and loved over the years, even though it flopped on release.
Your name makes me want to cry or write a poem or something, btw ?

[Corygal]

Hi Lucy


Which of the chocolates in the book do you like the sound of most? I've been obsessed since I was 5 with the idea of finding a fudgeripple mallow delight. I can taste it NOW (am 46).

[LucyMangan]

@TheNightIsDark

Do you think that Dahl felt that the Gene Wilder movie portrayed his book well? It must be utterly bizarre seeing people portray your creations and them possibly not matching up to your creations!

Also, do you feel that the great glass elevator was a worthy sequel? I remember being bitterly disappointed with it as a child.

No, he hated the film and Wilder especially. "He played it for subtle, adult laughs," Dahl said, which was not what he wanted at all. He had wanted Spike Milligan or Peter Sellers for the role.
I think the general feeling is that the GGE is nowhere near as good as Charlie, or indeed most of the other books. It was written when he was going through a very hard time - after his wife Patricia Neal had had a series of devastating strokes and he was forcing her through a punishing rehab routine that not everyone believed in, though in her autobiography she credits him with saving her - after a decade that had seen him lose his seven year old daughter Olivia and watch Theo go through multiple traumas and operations after his car crash.
Some bits work. I love the grandparents regressing to babyhood - and beyoooooooooond :)

[IdaBlankenship]

I went through a stage of drawing Vicious Knids... they were pleasingly whale like (well they were in the illustrations in my copy)

[fuzzpig]

Oh, I love GGE!

I always had a soft spot for the Vermicious Knids.

[Starlingsintheslipstream]

Thanks for answering my question Lucy . Looking forward to reading the book and hearing more about your next one. My MN name comes from the lyrics of a rather fab Pavement song.

[IdaBlankenship]

Oh Fuzzpig, I forgot they were called Vermicious... I must have simplified it in my simple brain

[LucyMangan]

@Corygal

Hi Lucy

Which of the chocolates in the book do you like the sound of most? I've been obsessed since I was 5 with the idea of finding a fudgeripple mallow delight. I can taste it NOW (am 46).

The Whipplescrumptious Fudgemallow Delight? I'M WITH YOU. It remains one of the greatest sorrows of my life that the Galaxy bar of the same name, which was released in conjunction with the Depp film in 2005 and was truly almost as delicious as the WFD bar of imagination was of course #!%@! discontinued before I'd even had a chance to stockpile.
Vanity Fair are publishing a never-seen-before chapter - tomorrow I think - about warming candies, and I like those too. Tiny red droplets of condensed heat come out of a machine and trap "cold heat" inside them as they fall.

[EBearhug]

Was it always your favourite Dahl book?

(I always preferred Fantastic Mr Fox & Danny the Champion of the World. CatCF is good, just not my favourite. But I also think Creme Eggs are vile.)

[Corygal]

Does anyone else find the grandparents in the book so saintly as to be royally irritating? Especially the simpering grannies who just lie there piously claiming they enjoy cabbage (can't you tell I was an impatient child).

No silver foxes, them. Pfff. They still make me grit my teeth.

[LucyMangan]

@IdaBlankenship

Hi Lucy & belated congratulations on the smallest member of your family.
Do you think that the reason CATCF is the most beloved of Roald Dahl's books is that it is the least dark of his children's books (IMHO)?
I was faintly traumatised as a child by The Twits, James & The Giant Peach and The Witches (although compelled to re-read them)

Thank you very much!
I think it's more perhaps that it's just the most overwhelming. I love all his books, but Charlie has the most dizzying onward rush...I think it's the one that gives you the most exhilarating sense of what reading can be like. And I think that there's probably just nothing better than a magical chocolate factory to appeal to a child's imagination - witches, giant fruit, telekinetic schoolgirls, all well and good, but a river of chocolate? Minty grass? COME ON.

[Corygal]

Thanks Lucy - you rock as a writer you know, may your book on children's lit make your fortune and turn your babes into tiny billionaires (but not like those stinky Veronica types).

[LucyMangan]

@EBearhug

Was it always your favourite Dahl book?

(I always preferred Fantastic Mr Fox & Danny the Champion of the World. CatCF is good, just not my favourite. But I also think Creme Eggs are vile.)

Danny, Matilda and The Witches (which my favourite teacher read aloud to us at school, which may have skewed my judgment somewhat) have all been top of my list at some point or another - but I think Charlie's back up there now (and this, as I say, is even after the 947th reading of the thing for the book).
As for the other thing - you're wrong. You're just simply wrong.

[LucyMangan]

@Corygal

Thanks Lucy - you rock as a writer you know, may your book on children's lit make your fortune and turn your babes into tiny billionaires (but not like those stinky Veronica types).

Oh, you are kind - thank you verra, verra much. I will keep the child unspoilt by spending all my billions on myself.

[Corygal]

Oh, and look up Sarah Fielding - she wrote the first book ever directed at children, called The Governess, and was Henry Fielding ie Tom Jones' sister.
She never gets any cred but she started the children's publishing industry which is worth countless etcs..

The Fielding Society has the stuff, as do some feminist libraries, but I can do one better - I can produce you her great great granddaughter (coy) if you like.

[LucyMangan]

@Upandatem

Sorry, one more, what were his politics?

TBH, I'm not very good on his (party) politics because they didn't really intrude on his children's fiction. Joseph Schindelman, the illustrator of the first edition of Charlie, remembers enjoying a long chat with him about their shared liberal politics (this was in the US in the early 60s) but he was also an admirer - I don't know how unequivocally - of Thatcher over here in the 80s.

[LucyMangan]

@Corygal

Oh, and look up Sarah Fielding - she wrote the first book ever directed at children, called The Governess, and was Henry Fielding ie Tom Jones' sister.
She never gets any cred but she started the children's publishing industry which is worth countless etcs..

The Fielding Society has the stuff, as do some feminist libraries, but I can do one better - I can produce you her great great granddaughter (coy) if you like.

I have a copy of The Governess - I will bump it up the to-be-read pile now... Thank you for the tip and - potentially - the gggranddaughter :)

[Corygal]

PM me, there are Fieldings living and roaming the streets of Covent Garden to this day. Loads of pictures and letters and that.

[LucyMangan]

@fuzzpig

I think that's the first time I've ever had a webchat question answered, thanks Lucy! :o

As a follow up if there's time - do you think there'll ever be another Dahl? In terms of whimsy/inventiveness etc...

Lemony Snicket is always mentioned, but he leaves me absolutely cold. There's an effortful quality there, a straining after effect that seems to me to be the antithesis of Dahl and bloody offputting in its own right too.
David Walliams is closer to the mark - I think he's very, very good, if not (yet?) quite good enough to match RD.
I think someone once argued the Mr Gum(m?) books at me too, but I haven't read any yet.
I'm sure there are millions of other contenders that I either can't think of at the moment or don't yet know about (I'm still on picture books for the child and YA for myself/the book I'm writing, so the 7-10s are a bit of an undiscovered country for me yet).

[LucyMangan]

@Chrissieoates

Ooooh and are you a chocaholic?!?!?

Yes, and like Dahl I will have no dealings with posh stuff. I like it cheap, plentiful and full of sugar and fat. No pissing about with Prestat. Except for their rose and violet creams. Obviously. I'm not a monster.

[LucyMangan]

@Corygal

Does anyone else find the grandparents in the book so saintly as to be royally irritating? Especially the simpering grannies who just lie there piously claiming they enjoy cabbage (can't you tell I was an impatient child).

No silver foxes, them. Pfff. They still make me grit my teeth.

I know where you're coming from, Corygal, but...chill. It'll be okay.
(And thank you for the offer of fielding a Fielding - I shall be in touch!)