Like Matilda, I was surrounded by bullies. I was eight when I met Matilda, slightly older than the eponymous heroine but not so old that I couldn’t see myself in her.

Roald Dahl’s novel Matilda turns 30 today, and millions of readers have found comfort in its pages – and perhaps found themselves too. It doesn’t matter how far a story lies outside your own experience if it contains characters you connect with, and words you can draw support from. It’s said that every good book is a self-help book, if you read it properly. Roald Dahl's Matilda at 30: A heroine who changed lives “Oh good,” Dr Matilda Wormwood is pictured thinking as a male library assistant brings her a huge pile of books: “Here’s one I haven’t read.” To mark the 30th anniversary of the first publication of the book, three of these sketches will appear next month on the covers of special collectors’ editions, showing Matilda variously as an astrophysicist, a world traveller and as chief executive of the British Library. Now, Roald Dahl’s Matilda – the most powerful female genius ever to be underestimated by a hammer-throwing headmistress – has been portrayed for the first time as a 30-year-old woman in a series of eight sketches by Dahl’s long-time illustrator and friend Quentin Blake. She was the quintessential young rebel who broke all the rules about how good little girls should be portrayed in children’s literature by standing up to bullies in the name of justice – and having a laugh at the same time. Matilda’s new adventures at 30: astrophysicist, explorer or bookworm Illustrator Sir Quentin Blake has reimagined the heroine, who outwitted the vile headteacher Miss Trunchbull, doing what she might do best.īBC News can exclusively reveal the illustration of Matilda Wormwood being depicted as poet laureate, 'widely celebrated for her moving performance of The Trunchball Saga'. What would Roald Dahl's much-loved bookworm Matilda be doing today, 30 years after the book about her was published? Sir Quentin Blake reimagines Matilda 30 years on Quentin Blake/Roald Dahl Story Company 2018.

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