Every child who loves the books of Roald Dahl (and try to find a child who doesn't) will be intrigued to discover some of the remarkable things that happened to the writer as a boy and as a young man. "I have never been able to get them out of my mind" says Dahl of these incidents. "Some are funny, some are painful, some are unpleasant.

I suppose that is why I have always remembered them so vividly.

All are true". Hilariously true are the details of the great mouse plot of 1924, when an eight-year-old Dahl and his gobstopper-loving friends took a just revenge on the disgusting sweetshop owner Mrs Pratchett.

All too true were the deaths of Dahl's father and his sister within the space of a few short weeks, the canings by headmasters and older schoolboys, the grisly methods of Matron and the car ride which nearly lost the author his nose.There were glorious times too, with his big family at home in Wales: on holiday each Summer on a remote island in Norway. 'One of the greatest places on Earth' and in the class of an endearing maths teacher who thought figures the dreariest things in the world.

As full of excitement and the unexpected as even Roald Dahl's own fiction, this book provides glimpses of one of the world's most popular writers for children that no one will want to miss.