Surprising literary ventures | 17 November 2007

The slender book above was the last thing Roald Dahl ever wrote, and was published posthumously by the British Railways Board. It is something of a deathbed conversion. The author spends the whole of it telling children — whom he describes as ‘uncivilised little savages with bad habits and no manners’ — how to behave themselves, in VERY LARGE RED CAPITAL LETTERS. ‘I have a VERY DIFFICULT JOB here,’ he admits in the first paragraph. ‘Young people are fed up with being told by grown-ups WHAT TO DO and WHAT NOT TO DO … and now I am going to have to tell you WHAT TO DO and WHAT NOT TO DO…. This is something I have never done in any of my books. I have been careful never to preach, never to be moralistic and never to convey any message to the reader.’ This surprising confession is followed by some imperatives of the large, red capital variety, illustrated by Quentin Blake (and including a sketch of a railway porter covered in urine thrown from a speeding train): ‘NEVER CROSS THE RAILWAY LINE TO GET TO THE OTHER SIDE …NEVER THROW ANYTHING AT TRAINS …NEVER DANGLE ANYTHING FROM BRIDGES …and NEVER NEVER NEVER STICK YOUR HEAD OUT OF A MOVING TRAIN.’