Unknown (main narrator, possibly Aaron Tracy)

After decades positioning himself as a sophisticated writer of adult fiction, a pivot like this feels like a surrender, a step down.

This is a guy who's very sensitive about how he's perceived.

Remember how much he downplayed his writing of the James Bond film, making fun of it to anyone that would listen?

That same malicious pride is at work here.

But then, a few days later, something shifts in Dahl.

Maybe it's thinking about Olivia and Theo.

Maybe it's the bleak future he senses he's in for if he sticks with only writing for adults.

Maybe it's all the bills stacking up for Neil's rehab.

Dahl's resistance begins to crack.

He calls his agent and doesn't exactly commit, but promises he'll give a children's story a try.

But he's determined no one will ever mistake this pivot for a failure or a retreat or feel sorry for him.

His ego constructs a defensive fortress, and you can hear it in every interview he ever gives on the topic.

Like here, on BBC One, speaking to Terry Wogan.

There's absolutely no question to me that writing, we're talking about fine children's books, is far, far harder.

Man, I wish I could just give Dahl a hug here, you know?

Tell him no one is looking down on him for his pivot.

Maybe I'm especially sensitive to it, because I always wanted to write movies, like the ones I grew up with.

Instead, I've built a career writing TV and audio dramas.

And I've caught myself getting defensive about it, too.

For Dahl, this defensiveness becomes almost a refrain, a mantra he repeats in interview after interview, as if he's still trying to convince himself of something, even as his children's books make him more famous and more successful than his adult fiction ever did.