Get the latest gossip

Giant review: A powerful portrait that puts Roald Dahl's uncomfortable views in the dock, writes PATRICK MARMION

PATRICK MARMION: Best-selling children's author and Second World War fighter pilot Roald Dahl is the latest historical figure to be put in the dock of public opinion.

Here Mark Rosenblatt’s new play examines the fallout from revolting anti-Semitic insinuations Dahl made in 1983 in a review of a book – God Cried – by Tony Clifton and Catherine Leroy, about the bombing of Lebanon the previous year. His scathing wit that won him friends as much as enemies, how he glosses his truculent cruelty as his being ‘a direct sort’, and excusing himself with his famous back pain. All of this is a cue for Dahl to be roundly rebuked – and this Garai’s intimidated US publisher does with excoriating rage, identifying him as a nasty belligerent child for holding an entire people to blame for the actions of a single government.

Get the Android app