In Roald Dahl's television series Tales of the Unexpected (1979–1988), he explains the inspiration behind Lamb to the Slaughter, originally published in 1953:
My friend, the late Ian Fleming, the James Bond man, is really responsible for the story you're going to see now. We were staying the weekend at the house in Vermont, and, at dinner, the roast leg of lamb was so dry and tough that Ian looked across the room and whispered, "This ruddy thing must have been in deep freeze for ten years; you ought to be shot."
Fleming's joke that the lamb was in the deep freeze for so long and that Dahl should be murdered for serving it, inspired the author of the short story to use a frozen leg of lamb or mutton as a murder weapon (a leg of lamb that is room temperature would not have done much damage).
Roald Dahl had a definite tendency toward dark humor, even in his books written for children. For instance, in Matilda, headmistress Trunchbull's most dangerous form of punishment is placing children who misbehave in the Chokey, a cupboard so small that children were forced to stand, with broken glass sticking out in the walls and nails on the door.
No comments:
Post a Comment