8vo. 80 pp. Red cloth lettered in gilt; pictorial dust jacket. Fourth printing.  Signed by Roald Dahl on front endpaper.

The book is the story of a married couple, Mr and Mrs Twit, who despise each other. They are spiteful and vindictive and both hideously ugly but – an important lesson here – they are physically disgusting because their inner souls are awful. As Dahl puts it: “If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face … A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly.”

The only joy the Twits get is from doing the dirty on each other, playing grotesque tricks including mixing worms into spaghetti, throwing frogs into the other’s bed, and lengthen their chair legs to make it appear as though one has shrunk. They are horrid to each other, but in thoroughly entertaining ways.