Danny the Champion of the World was published in 1975 and is one of Dahl’s most affectionate and personal novels. It is a warm story about the love between a father and son — and one magnificent, audacious plan.
Danny lives with his widowed father in a gypsy caravan beside a petrol station in rural England. His father — a brilliant, imaginative, deeply loving man — is the best person Danny has ever known. Danny’s life is simple but very happy.
One night Danny discovers his father has secretly been poaching pheasants from the estate of the horrible, snobbish Mr Victor Hazell — a rich man who runs a shooting party every year and treats everyone around him with contempt. Danny is not angry at his father for poaching; he finds the secret fascinating. He also learns that poaching has a long tradition in the area.
Danny invents a brilliant new poaching method — putting sleeping powder inside raisins and leaving them for the pheasants to eat. On the night before Hazell’s big shoot, he and his father scatter hundreds of drugged raisins across Hazell’s wood. The next morning, hundreds of sleeping pheasants are found — and taken to the village by the whole community before Hazell’s guests can arrive. The shoot is a total humiliation for Hazell.
The plan goes slightly wrong: Danny’s father is bitten by a dog and hospitalised; the pheasants wake up prematurely inside the cars of Hazell’s guests, causing chaos. But the mission is accomplished. Hazell is humiliated, the village wins, and Danny’s father comes home safely.
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