The Twits
BOOKS IN THE ROALD DAHL CLASSIC COLLECTION
James and the Giant Peach
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The Magic Finger
Fantastic Mr Fox
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
Danny the Champion of the World
The Enormous Crocodile
The Twits
George’s Marvellous Medicine
The BFG
Revolting Rhymes
The Witches
Dirty Beasts
Boy: Tales of Childhood
The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me
Going Solo
Matilda
Rhyme Stew
Esio Trot
Billy and the Minpins
MORE BOOKS BY ROALD DAHL
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More
The Great Automatic Grammatizator
Skin and Other Stories
The Twits
lustr ated by Quent in
e
PENGUIN
ROALD DAHL CLASSIC COLLECTION
Il
Blak
THE
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First published by Jonathan Cape 1980
Published by Puffin Books 1982
Reissued 2016, 2022
This edition published 2024 001
Text copyright © The Roald Dahl Story Company Ltd, 1980 Illustrations copyright © Quentin Blake, 1980
Text and archive image © The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre, 2024
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
ROALD DAHL is a registered trademark of The Roald Dahl Story Company Ltd www.roalddahl.com
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ISBN: 978–0–241–67765–0
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For Emma
Hairy Faces 1 Mr Twit 2 Dirty Beards 3 Mrs Twit 6 The Glass Eye 9 The Frog 12 The Wormy Spaghetti 16 The Funny Walking Stick 19 Mrs Twit Has the Shrinks 23 Mrs Twit Gets a Stretching 26 Mrs Twit Goes Ballooning Up 28 Mrs Twit Comes Ballooning Down 31 Mr Twit Gets a Horrid Shock 33 The House, the Tree and the Monkey Cage 36 Hugtight Sticky Glue 39 Four Sticky Little Boys 41 The Great Upside-Down Monkey Circus 44 The Roly-Poly Bird to the Rescue 46 CONTENTS
No Bird Pie for Mr Twit 50 Still No Bird Pie for Mr Twit 51 Mr and Mrs Twit Go Off to Buy Guns 53 Muggle-Wump Has an Idea 57 The Great Glue Painting Begins 61 The Carpet Goes on the Ceiling 66 The Furniture Goes Up 70 The R avens Swoop Over 75 The Twits Are Turned Upside Down 78 The Monkeys Escape 82 The Twits Get the Shrinks 85
Hairy Faces
What a lot of hairy-faced men there are around nowadays.
When a man grows hair all over his face it is impossible to tell what he really looks like.
Perhaps that’s why he does it. He’d rather you didn’t know.
Then there’s the problem of washing.
When the very hairy ones wash their faces, it must be as big a job as when you and I wash the hair on our heads.
So what I want to know is this. How often do all these hairy-faced men wash their faces? Is it only once a week, like us, on Sunday nights? And do they shampoo it? Do they use a hairdryer? Do they rub hair tonic in to stop their faces from going bald? Do they go to a barber to have their hairy faces cut and trimmed or do they do it themselves in front of the bathroom mirror with nail scissors?
I don’t know. But next time you see a man with a hairy face (which will probably be as soon as you step out on to the street) maybe you will look at him more closely and start wondering about some of these things.
1
Mr Twit
Mr Twit was one of these very hairy-faced men. The whole of his face except for his forehead, his eyes and his nose was covered with thick hair. The stuff even sprouted in revolting tufts out of his nostrils and ear holes.
Mr Twit felt that this hairiness made him look terrifically wise and grand. But in truth he was neither of these things. Mr Twit was a twit. He was born a twit. And now at the age of sixty, he was a bigger twit than ever.
2
