# The Best of Roald Dahl

> Source: https://ollybritton.com/notes/books/best-of-roald-dahl/ · Updated: 2026-02-26 · Tags: book, notes

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> Collection of short stories written by Roald Dahl.

These were really good. It was nice that it was in chronological order so you could see how he evolved as a writer. These were all the short stories, with a quick description so there’s spoilers ahead. I’ve starred the ones that I particularly enjoyed:

- _Madame Rosette_, about how some pilots from the army rescue prostitutes who are being manipulated.
- ⭐️ _Man from the South_, about a man who makes a bet that someone can’t light their lighter 10 times, betting a sports car for their pinky finger.
- _The Sound Machine_, about a man who invents a machine that lets him hear sounds outside the range of ordinary hearing, and discovers that plants and trees scream when you chop them.
- ⭐️ _Taste_, about a gourmet who ends up betting that he can identify wine, betting his house for the daughter of the host’s hand in marriage.
- _Dip in the Pool_, about a man who takes some drastic measures in order to win a competition to see who can most accurately guess how far the ship will travel in a day.
- _Skin_, about how someone used to know this great artist who tattooed his back when they were younger, and ends up walking into a exhibition of his art.
- _Edward the Conqueror_, about a strange cat that maybe was a famous composer.
- _Lamb to the Slaughter_, about a woman who murders her husband after he tries to divorce her.
- _Galloping Foxley_, about someone who meets their ex-bully on a train journey home and remembers all the horrible details of what they used to do.
- _The Way Up to Heaven_, about a woman whose husband teases her a lot by making them deliberately late, and how she takes her revenge.
- _Parson’s Pleasure_, about a man who finds expensive furniture to sell by conning people in the country into selling it for substantially less than it was worth.
- ⭐️ _The Landlady_, about a young man who is travelling to Bath and needs somewhere to stay the night, and ends up staying in a spooky B&B rather than a hotel.
- _William and Mary_, about the wife of a man who gets his brain preserved after he dies so he can still be concious.
- _Mrs Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat_, a story about how a woman tries to justify being given a really expensive coat by her secret lover to her husband.
- ⭐️ _Royal Jelly_, about a man who’s crazy about bees finding a strange solution to the fact that their newborn baby isn’t drinking enough milk.
- ⭐️ _Georgy Porgy_, about a local vicar who dislikes any physical contact with women because of something that happened in his past having a bit of a breakdown.
- _Genesis and Catastrophe_, about how Hitler was born.
- ⭐️ _Pig_, about an orphan who grows up in the countryside with his vegetarian aunt, and then when she dies gets to learns about the real world.
- ⭐️ _The Visitor_, frame narrative consisting of an uncle’s diaries, in this one he ends up stuck in the desert but is thankfully rescued by a wealthy person from the local area, and then how he tries to seduce both his daughter and his wife.
- _Claud’s Dog_, a mini-collection of stories all involving Claud, a man from the country who seems to be trying to get rich.
- _The Ratcatcher_, about a very strange ratcatcher.
- _Rummins_, about an unexpected thing in a hayrick.
- _Mr Hoddy_, about Claud trying to impress his wife’s father by convincing him of his latest business venture, a maggot farm.
- ⭐️ _Mr Feasey_, about Claud and someone called Gordon trying to make loads of money by swapping a really bad greyhound for a really good one, at odds 25-1, but then all the bookies don’t pay out.
- ⭐️ _The Champion of the World_, about Claud and Gordon discovering a secret way to capture pheasants by giving them sleeping pills but then they all escape in the morning when they wake up.

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Olly Britton — https://ollybritton.com. Machine-readable index: https://ollybritton.com/llms.txt