Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake’s angry and unlistened-to young heroine’s time has surely come
Who would play me in a film of my life? Great question and thank you for asking. In adulthood, Nicholas Lyndhurst, with a pain au chocolat taped to his forehead because wigwork is notoriously pricey, and for the childhood years, Roald Dahl’s Matilda, drawn in pencil. As we enter the second act there’ll be a complicated montage sequence where Quentin Blake’s illustration becomes human, Lyndhursting, signifying a forming of identity and self, etc, and thus flesh. It will be a silent film, and also foreign, and very challenging.
Like many, Matilda is on my mind at the moment. Last week, after a public poll asked who she “would be standing up to today”, a statue was erected opposite the library at Great Missenden, of Matilda staunchly facing a Trunchbull-like Donald Trump. It’s rare that a character from a children’s book fixes itself in the public imagination in the way she did, and to mark her impact, to show that she lives on, the 30th anniversary of Dahl’s book was celebrated with new Quentin Blake drawings reimagining her as a grown woman in eight glittering careers. It was reminiscent of the way Barbie relaunches herself quarterly as an astronaut or paleontologist, except with fewer tits, but yes, having once been one of those short-sighted children with whom Matilda resonated, I appreciated it.
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