The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me only recently arrived in England, all the animals are finding it hard to acquire the right food to feed themselves. This includes fish for the Pelican, especially his favourite salmon; walnuts for the Monkey; and pink and purple tinkle-tinkle tree flowers for the Giraffe, who happens to be a "Geraneous Giraffe" and therefore can eat no food other than these flowers. Billy and the animals all band together when they receive a letter from the Duke of Hampshire asking them to clean the 677 windows of Hampshire House. Things go smoothly when they get there until, while cleaning the windows
Roald Dahl of Dahl's birth, his letters to his mother were abridged and broadcast as BBC Radio 4's "Book of the Week". Dahl wrote about his time at St Peter's in his autobiography "Boy: Tales of Childhood". From 1929, when he was 13, Dahl attended Repton School in Derbyshire. Dahl disliked the hazing and described an environment of ritual cruelty and status domination, with younger boys having to act as personal servants for older boys, frequently subject to terrible beatings. His biographer Donald Sturrock described these violent experiences in Dahl's early life. Dahl expresses some of these darker experiences in his writings,