Shortly after arriving back in England, while the boy is working on the roof of his treehouse, he sees a strange woman in black staring up at him with an eerie smile and quickly registers that she is a witch. She also tells him about the mysterious Grand High Witch of All the World, the feared and diabolical leader of all of the world's witches, who visits their councils in every country, each year. The grandmother reveals that witches in different countries have different customs and that, while the witches in each country have close affiliations with one another, they are not allowed to communicate with witches from other countries. She also assures him that there are fewer witches in England than there are in Norway. However, the grandmother warns the boy to be on his guard, since English witches are known to be among the most vicious in the world, notorious for turning children into loathsome creatures so that unsuspecting adults will kill them.
She tells him how to recognise them, and that she is a retired witch hunter (she, herself, had an encounter with a witch when she was a child, which left her with a missing thumb).Īccording to the boy's grandmother, a real witch looks exactly like an ordinary woman, but there are ways of telling whether she is a witch: real witches have claws instead of fingernails, which they hide by wearing gloves are bald, which they hide by wearing wigs that often make them break out in rashes have square feet with no toes, which they hide by wearing uncomfortable pointy shoes have eyes with pupils that change colours have blue spit which they use for ink, and have large nostrils which they use to sniff out children to a witch, a child smells of fresh dogs droppings the dirtier the child, the less likely she is to smell them.Īs specified in the parents' will, the narrator and his grandmother return to England, where he was born and had attended school, and where the house he is inheriting is located. The boy loves all his grandmother's stories, but he is especially enthralled by the stories about real-life witches who she says are horrific female demons who seek to kill human children. The story is narrated from the perspective of an unnamed seven-year-old English boy, who goes to live with his Norwegian grandmother after his parents are killed in a tragic car accident. The book was adapted into an unabridged audio reading by Lynn Redgrave, a stage play and a two-part radio dramatization for the BBC, a 1990 film directed by Nicolas Roeg which starred Anjelica Huston and Rowan Atkinson, a 2008 opera by Marcus Paus and Ole Paus, and a 2020 film directed by Robert Zemeckis.
The most common critique against the novel was based on perceived misogyny. It is one of the top all-time children's novels, but received originally mixed reviews. The Witches was originally published in 1983 by Jonathan Cape in London, with illustrations by Quentin Blake who had previously collaborated with Dahl. The witches are ruled by the extremely vicious and powerful Grand High Witch, who arrives in England to organize her plan to turn all of the children in England into mice. The story is set partly in Norway and partly in England, and features the experiences of a young English boy and his Norwegian grandmother in a world where child-hating societies of witches secretly exist in every country. But that's my burden to work out in therapy.The Witches is a British children's dark fantasy novel by the British writer Roald Dahl. And that's terrifying because I was never that close with her. Do I still imagine being turned into a mouse and having to call my grandma up for help? Yes.
Scores of children are still haunted by Huston, bald and in full prosthetic makeup. The story seems pretty innocuous, but if you were a kid of the '90s growing up with the Anjelica Huston version of this movie, you know this story is not one to mess around with. Only with the help of his grandmother can he escape and ensure they can't turn the entire world population of children into mice. Starring Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, and Stanley Tucci, the film follows a boy who finds himself in the crosshairs of a coven of witches. Pair that with how incredible the trailer looks, and it's difficult to imagine that this remake of the 1990 film will be anything less than a perfectly wild ride. While a straight to streaming release used to mean bad news for a film, we live in times where we're grateful to land any new film from the comfort of our couch.
In 2020's long list of films that are heading straight to streaming, Roald Dahl’s The Witches is landing on HBO Max on October 22.