In a small Buckinghamshire village forty minutes by bus away from Reading and 8 miles from Aylesbury, Matilda Wormwood is born to Mr and Mrs Wormwood. She immediately shows awesome See more

Dahl's initial draft for the novel portrayed Matilda as a wicked, irrational girl, her name being drawn from Hilaire Belloc's poem "Matilda Who Told Such Dreadful Lies", who tortured her innocent parents … See more

The year after the book was published, it received the 1989 Red House Children's Book Award. In 2000, it received the Blue Peter Book Award. In 2003, Matilda was listed at number 74 in The Big Read, a BBC poll of the British public of the top 200 novels of all time. … See more

The "mean and loathsome" Mrs Pratchett, owner of the sweet shop Dahl frequented as a boy in Cardiff, inspired Dahl's creation of Miss Trunchbull. Mr Wormwood was based on a real-life character from Dahl's home village of Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire. … See more

In 1990, the Redgrave Theatre in Farnham produced a musical version, adapted by Rony Robinson with music by Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, which toured the UK. It starred Annabelle Lanyon as Matilda and Jonathan Linsley as Miss Trunchbull and had mixed reviews. … See more

One of Miss Trunchbull's punishments is to force an overweight child, Bruce Bogtrotter, to eat an enormous chocolate cake, which makes him so full that he cannot move. The cook had caught him stealing a piece of cake from the kitchen. In Roald Dahl's … See more

• Attachment theory
• Child abuse See more