Danny the Champion of the World

Many of the incidents and characters in the book and movie were based on real-life events and people from author Roald Dahl's own life. For example, he knew a butcher who taught him the art of poaching, and Captain Lancaster (Ronald Pickup) was based upon a real and similarly-vicious teacher --- identified as "Captain Hardcastle" in Dahl's childhood-autobiography book, "Boy" --- whom Dahl had while in school; like the teacher in the book, Captain Hardcastle was ex-military and still arrogantly wanted to be addressed as "Captain", even though it was a very low rank and the war was long over; also like the fictional character, he obsessively kept an eagle-eye on his pupils to seek out opportunities to punish them, and had the creepy fire-colored hair and mustache, watery eyes, and shell-shock-caused twitching and grunting.

Since the keepers were leaving after Danny had arrived, they would have found the Baby Austin on their way out of the woods. In the book, Danny does not get there till sometime after the keepers had seen his father trapped in the pit, and had left for the night.

Featured in The Marvellous World of Roald Dahl (2016)