Love from Boy
- Author Donald Sturrock
- Narrator Andrew Wincott, Thomas Judd
- Publisher John Murray Press
- Run Time 7 hours and 17 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Biography and non-fiction prose, Biography: general, Diaries, letters and journals.
Titles Purchased
- 1-5
- 6-10
- 11-15
- 16-20
- Over 20
Price p/Title
- €9.95
- €8.95
- €7.95
- €6.95
- €5.95
Listen to a sample
What to expect
Critics Review
-
A touching collection that throws new light on one of the greatest of all children’s book writers . . . The sense of humour, often dark and subversive, that would come to delight the readers of Matilda, Fantastic Mr Fox and The Witches, dances through the pages of this wonderful book . . . Each chronological subdivision of this lovely book is illustrated with drawings, maps and photographs and prefaced by Donald Sturrock’s exemplary editorial explanations. The letters become a delightfully original form of biography, as their author changes from child into student, into trainee fighter pilot in Iraq and Egypt, wartime daredevil in Greece and Palestine, diplomat in Washington, and unlikely British spy
Evening Standard -
Love From Boy, in all its cunning unreliability, becomes more fascinating the more you think about it. It is a work of showmanship, written for someone to whom the author would always be a child. As the backdrop to one of the world’s greatest children’s writers, it’s so wonderfully complicated you’d have thought even Dahl couldn’t have made it up. Except that he did
Daily Telegraph -
Sturrock’s carefully chosen letters, complemented by a judicious selection of biographical and photographic material, testify to a bond between mother and son that is unbreakable, even in the face of boarding school, war and sexual jokes about Hitler
The Times, Book of the Week -
Sturrock is right to claim that the letters to his mother show, in embryo, essential features of Dahl’s art, such as his fantastical imagination and his sadistic sense of humour
Sunday Times -
[An] entertaining and eye-opening collection . . . it is his younger self that is captured here – jaunty and anarchic, yet a recognisable forerunner of that more subtly anarchic, stooping, cardiganed figure who was the world-famous author, gazing out on the world from his garden shed with watery, mischievous eyes
Literary Review -
[An] enjoyable selection from Dahl’s devoted four-decade correspondence with his mother . . . an intriguing mixture of absolute intimacy, a total disregard for priggishness or decorum, fierce candour, and, in certain respects, a complete absence of it
Guardian
More from the same
Author
Subscribe to our newsletter
Sign up to get tailored content recommendations, product updates and info on new releases. Your data is your own: we commit to protect your data and respect your privacy.