The true story of when Roald Dahl met Beatrix Potter

Encounter is being dramatised in Sky One show The Tail of a Curious Mouse

Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of a Curious Mouse is set to be one of this year’s festive telly highlights. The one-off film tells the story of a young Roald Dahl travelling across the UK to meet his literary hero, Beatrix Potter.

Starring Dawn French as Potter and nine-year-old Harry Tayler as Dahl, the Sky One show is based on a real-life meeting that took place in the 1920s, when Dahl was a little boy and Potter was in her 60s. As shown in the dramatisation, Dahl did travel from Wales, where he grew up, to Potter’s home in the Lake District.

Around the time of the meeting, Dahl’s suffered the loss of two of his family members. His older sister’s death from a burst appendix was followed weeks later by his father, Harald, dying as a result of pneumonia. Potter, meanwhile, was beginning to lose her eyesight.

Dahl’s friend Brough Girling – a fellow author who befriended the writer in the later years of his life – recently told The Times that Dahl had shared the story of his meeting with Potter over dinner one night.

“He asked his mother if he could go and visit her home when he was about nine or ten,” Girling said. “He remembered walking up the road to her house and getting nervous because she was his favourite author. And then when he got to the farmyard it was like stepping into one of his favourite books. He recognised it because she drew it all in Jemima Puddle-Duck.”

The story goes that Dahl spotted Potter in her garden and she asked what he wanted. He explained that he had come to see Beatrix Potter and she replied: “Well, you’ve seen her now so buzz off.”

Girling, however, believes this might not be exactly how it happened. “I don’t think he’d have made up the entire story, but he was a great embellisher,” he said. “‘Buzz off’ was how he spoke, in that sort of prep school language. I think it’s likely that she told him to go away, but he’s just spiced it up a bit.”

It was Girling’s account of this story in a newspaper over a decade ago that led to the making of the Sky One show.

Dahl’s admiration for Potter was well-known. Before writing his first book he told his agent he couldn’t tell stories about animals because Potter had already done it so well, and he chose insects for James and the Giant Peach because they were one part of the animal kingdom she had not covered.

Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse airs on Sky One at 8.15pm on Christmas Eve.