A Gen Z Reviews the Classics: Roald Dahl's 'Danny the Champion of the World' will make you call your Dad

I remember reading Danny the Champion of the World when I was a child — I must have been nine or ten. I remember flopping on my belly in my bedroom and devouring the thing. It's unlike most other Dahl books like Matilda, The BFG, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and yet it is one such an adventurous, exciting book. One of the most underrated things Dahl ever wrote, too — which is a strange thing to say about a beloved author, but the book does not get as much praise as it deserves.

The plot, which is really a caper

Danny is nine, being raised alone by his father, William, in a gypsy caravan behind a filling station on a country road in rural England. Their life looks, from the outside, like it might be all hard work without any fun, but that is far from the case.

William is described in the book as "sparky" — he always comes up with amazingly interesting ideas, flies kites, builds things, tells Danny stories every night. One night he makes tiny hot air balloons, with little balls of fire in them. Danny was only four when his mother died, and from then on his father was everything to him.

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When Danny turns nine, his father reveals a very deep secret: he is a poacher, specifically of pheasants, from the estate of the local villain Mr Victor Hazell, a conceited, eccentric millionaire and a roaring snob, the kind of man who holds an annual shooting party for the county's old money in the hope of being accepted by them. Horrifically, he also kicks dogs.

Danny and his father decide to ruin the party entirely. Sleeping pills stuffed into raisins, left out for the pheasants to find — hundreds of birds drop from the trees before a single shot is fired. The entire village, including the local vicar, is rooting for them, because Hazell has made himself thoroughly cruel to everyone. The scheme is satisfying in the way that only children's literature can make revenge feel — clean, deserved, and very funny.

What it is actually about

The book is much beyond the plot though, and it will almost hurt you when you read it as an adult. There's something about being young and having this unbreakable image of your parents, where you think they can do no wrong even if they are doing wrong, and you count on them with every inch of your being.

When Danny finds out that his father is a poacher and of course, he is scared, but he also just wants to join him. Dahl writes: no father is perfect. Grown-ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets. He is talking about poaching, but he is also not talking about poaching.

Another beautiful thing is that Danny and his father are equals. William really values his ideas, how he thinks, his solutions, his abilities. When Danny's father goes missing one night and Danny comes alone into the woods in the middle of the night to find him — nine years old, in the dark — his father looks up at him from the bottom of a pit with a broken ankle and says: Hello, my marvellous darling.

There’s a reckless streak to Danny’s father that makes him enormously entertaining, without ever undermining his love for his son. He keeps food on the table, tells Danny stories, sends him to school, builds things for him.

And when the plan that brings Hazell's party crashing down turns out to be entirely Danny's, it feels exactly right. The father champions his own son.

Reading it as an adult

Reading it as an adult was nostalgic, but also bittersweet. I miss seeing my dad like that. I still admire him enormously, of course — perhaps more now than then, knowing a little better what it takes to hold things together.

There are few feelings like the love a child has for a parent. You trust them completely. Their strengths seem limitless, their flaws barely visible. The world feels safer simply because they are in it. You don't stop to weigh their virtues against their mistakes, you love them without reservation. Danny the Champion of the World captures that feeling beautifully, reminding readers of the joy, security and wonder of loving a parent with your whole heart.