How Roald Dahl’s family tragedy inspired Willy Wonka

Long before Willy Wonka locked himself away behind the huge iron gates of the biggest chocolate factory in the world, becoming a reclusive figure of rumour and magic, he was a dashing and penniless ingénue with dreams of establishing a chocolate shop in Paris. At least, that’s the story according to the new prequel, Wonka, in cinemas now, in which Timothée Chalamet plays Roald Dahl’s maverick inventor in his youth with such wide-eyed, guileless sweetness, one wonders if he has sugar running thro