Roald Dahl hut campaign under fire

Roald Dahl hut campaign under fire NEWS

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Roald Dahl's family have launched an appeal to save the small 1950s hut, where the late author penned his best work. However, it has created anger among fans who believe the family can easily afford the renovation themselves.

The relatives of Roald Dahl launched the appeal on Tuesday to raise £500,000 in order to renovate the dilapidated hut at the author's home in Missenden, Bucks, in which Dahl wrote classics such as Charlie and The Chocolate Factory and Fantastic Mr Fox.

However, the campaign has received criticism from those who suggest that Dahl's family should fund the project with their own money.

Across the world, Dahl's books continue to sell at the rate of 12 a minute every day of the year. One person wrote on Twitter: 'I love Roald Dahl but half a million quid to relocate a shed? Really? And the continuing royalties won't cover that anyway?', while on the Daily Telegraph website, there are comments calling the Dahl family 'stingy' and 'greedy'.

Benefiting from the sale of 100m books, the Dahl family are said to have made 'a very significant financial contribution' to the campaign, according to Amelia Foster from the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre.

'It does seem like a lot of money,' Ms Foster told the BBC. 'But we're not just moving it, we're conserving it - so that is, of necessity, an expensive business.'

The writing room contains items left untouched since the author's death in 1990. The hut contains no writing desk but his favourite wing-backed chair, a huge ball made from foil sweet wrappers, lined yellow legal pads on which he wrote his stories and, oddly enough, his extracted hip bone.

The project would ensure the items were reassembled in the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre precisely as they were left in the hut since the author's death. However, the building itself, which was built in the 1950s by Dahl's friend Wally Saunders - inspiration for the BFG - will be left to fall down. Built on a single layer of bricks and insulated by polystyrene, it is believed the hut won't survive another winter.

In a statement, the campaign said: 'Ramshackle and dangerous perhaps but there is no question that Roald Dahl's writing hut is a unique cultural icon, of both national and international importance.

'Roald Dahl was a highly disciplined writer and ensconced himself in the hut every day for 30 years.

'During his lifetime he was the sole person to go in and out of the hut [and] it has remained a private place entered only by friends, family and visitors Now, that is poised to change and the public at large will be able to experience its magic.'

In regards to the costs involved in the project, Amanda Conquy, chairman of the Roald Dahl Museum in Great Missenden, Bucks, and director of the author's literary estate said: 'It seems like a lot of money but filleting and removing the contents and renovating them to put on display is almost a forensic exercise.

'I know it's only a small room but, to put it in context, recreating Francis Bacon's studio in Dublin cost £4m.'