Original Illustrations For Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox Worth Thousands | Antiques Roadshow UK

Thank you so much for bringing these in. For me these are so exciting to see because I have this book at home and I remember these illustrations from when I was a little girl. We've amazingly, we've got Mr Fox's Underground Warren from Roald Dahl's book Fantastic Mr Fox and then over here we've got possibly the three most evil villains Bogus Bonce and Bean and these are the original illustrations. How did you get them? In the 60s and 70s we had an art gallery in Nottingham and one of our exhibitions was Donald Chuffin who did these illustrations and at the end of the exhibition my mother said to me we could choose which pictures we would like from the exhibition and my sister had three small ones of similar size to that one and we chose a bigger one and a small one. Well can I say I think you made a very very good choice. Everyone will remember the story Fantastic Mr Fox. It's about Mr Fox and his family who live in this amazing tree house and it's from the beginning of the book and I always think this is one of the most important pictures from the book because Roald Dahl writes in the hole lived Mr Fox and Mrs Fox and their four small foxes and if you look closely at the picture there's Mrs Fox sitting by the fireplace and then you've got the little foxes up in the tree. It's signed at the bottom Donald Chuffin 1970 and you chose the other one. Why did you choose Bogus Bonce and Bean? I fancied that one. They were just so funny. Very amusing. Because what I love about this one is actually it comes at the very end of the book and you'll remember at the end of the story once Mr Fox has stolen all the food and all the livestock from the three villains they are sitting at the end and Roald Dahl says as far as I know they are still waiting and have you seen the Hollywood film by Wes Anderson? No. You must watch it because Wes Anderson asked Donald Chuffin to help him on the film. And when you watch the film you'll really recognise this amazing underground house, tree house and also all the foxes in the film they do look exactly like Donald Chuffin's original illustrations. I think what's special about that is because this was the first illustrated version of the story Chuffin would have worked with Roald Dahl and they would have talked about how Roald Dahl pictured the life of the foxes and the three villains which brings us to what they might be worth. For me these are really exciting because in an age of the e-book where lots of books aren't illustrated anymore these pictures live forever. I remember this story I hope somewhere at home I've still got this book. I can see this one making anywhere between one to two thousand on a good day and these three I love this one and I think if it was at auction it had an estimate of around eight to twelve hundred. If you had two people that got really excited you never know it could sky's the limit on that one. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for bringing them and I loved a trip down memory lane to my childhood. Thank you, thank you very much.