About two paragraphs of this will be published, couched in hatred for Roald Dahl. Fair cop, here's what I wrote:
Sophie Dahl, former model and granddaughter of Roald Dahl, launched a £500,000 campaign on Tuesday to save her grandfather’s writing shed. The money is needed to restore the small brick and polystyrene hut, which has fallen into disrepair, and move the interior from its current location at the bottom of the garden in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, to the nearby Roald Dahl Museum.
The author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, who would have been celebrating his 95th birthday on Tuesday, visited the yellow-doored building every day for 30 years until his death in 1990.
Ms Dahl told The Telegraph that while she would miss visiting the shed, "it would be selfish to keep it here, it's time for it be seen by the public."
The great expense of the project is due to the delicate state of the structure, which remains exactly as the author left it, with pages from his notebook still scattered on the floor.
While Amelia Foster, the director of the museum, insists that the Dahl family have already made a “very significant financial contribution” to the project, and that they are looking for funding from foundations and trusts, not the general public, the reaction to the announcement has been mixed. Many commentators have asked why Sophie Dahl, a successful writer herself, and her husband, chart topping jazz singer Jamie Cullum, cannot come up with the money themselves. Radio 4’s Best of Today programme called the building a “literary article of some significance” but pointed out that “half a million seems like a lot of money for a shed”.
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