«Matthew Dennison's streamlined text clips along with an economy befitting Dahl's brusque manner... Dennison presents a rounded picture [...] and gets to Dahl's flawed, human core»

Country Life

«A well-researched, compact book»

Observer

«This book is riveting, and immaculately written»

Sunday Telegraph

«Brace yourself for Dahl mania... Documenting the multi-layered life of Roald Dahl as a creative maverick who created some of the most well-loved characters in literature, this biography reevaluates Dahl by examining his surviving relics»

Tatler

«A crisply done and well-judged survey of the outline of the life»

TLS

«[An] impeccably balanced new biography»

Mail on Sunday

«An intriguing read about a vastly talented but morally weak man»

The Anglo-Celt

«Dennison recasts the narrative of the daredevil pilot and spy-turned-author as a rule-breaker, romantic and ultimately a child's friend»

School House

«An elegant new biography... capturing [Dahl’s] grandiose, tragedy-specked life.»

The New York Times

«Superb psychological study of a literary genius... Matthew Dennison's biography of Roald Dahl manages to peel back the layers of an infamously complex man»

Sunday Business Post

«Devotes a large chunk of his book to Dahl's Norwegian family and schooldays; their combination of warmth, tragedy, inspiration and savagery is brilliantly evoked... [His account] makes you feel grudging admiration for a bully whose self-belief was, in a way, heroic»

Sunday Times