If you want to discover how a snake-man avoids a poisonous bite, what to do if you find yourself in the mouth of a lion and where Rudolph Valentino comes into it all, just plunge into the adventurous pages of Going Solo.

As Hazel Rochman in the New York Times Book Review declared of Roald Dahl’s Boy: ‘the autobiographical stories are as frightening and funny as his fiction’. What could be higher praise than that?