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Dahl's The Twits is at its finest during the first half of the book which relates various highlights in the comedy of cruelty that is the marriage between the two eponymous grotesques, Mr and Mrs Twit. When Mrs Twit isn't serving Mr Twit a bowl of worms or hiding her glass eye in his after-supper beer, and when Mr Twit isn't playing a fucked-up mind game on Mrs Twit - such as carving away an inch of his wife's cane, day by day, so that he can trick her into thinking she is slowly but surely shrinking - the two put their loathsome heads together to terrorize monkeys, butcher birds, and even try their hand at eating little boys. The second half of the book is gentler and more playful with its many exotic animals banding together to make sure that the Twits get the their topsy-turvy just desserts. I for one would have loved for hundreds of more pages of Panurgian acts of vengeance between the two utterly reprehensible and revolting Twits, but we must remember the kids, of course.

Dahl once again serves up another irreverently funny story for the more astute and world-weary young readers of the world. The Twits is a sound reminder that the world is full of mostly awful people who will do mostly awful things to other people, like you for instance little boy and/or girl.

The voluble, pitch-black satirist Will Self recommended this wonderful audio recording of the book which features actor Simon Callow giving absolutely disgusting and brilliant voices to the titular twits (the only downside is that you lose out on Quentin Blake's idiosyncratically iconic illustrations):