Introductory abstract from A Distant Cry Stories from East Anglia Chosen by Peter Tolhurst, 2002, Black Dog Books Norwich: Long before the success of
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1963) established him as one of the great children's authors, Dahl was still living with his mother in Oxfordshire where he managed to scrape a living as a short story writer. In April 1946 he read about the fabulous hoard of Roman silver that had been unearthed in the fens. The richness of the hoard and the mysterious nature of its discovery excited the young writer and he set off immediately for Suffolk in search of Gordon Butcher, the ploughman who had found the treasure four years earlier. Dahl overcame Butcher's initial reluctance to talk by promising to write an honest account of what happened and to give Butcher half the proceeds from the story which he sold soon after to an American newspaper. It was another thirty years before The Mildenhall Treasure first appeared in this country in
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (1977).
First Published 1997 in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, Jonathan Cape.
