Happy Birthday Roald Dahl: insights for adults from a children's writer

It's Roald Dahl's 99th birth anniversary. In other words, a perfectly scrumdiddlyumptious, swishwifflingly fabulous occasion to celebrate.

For he gave us not only Matilda but also whizpopping, the kinder word for emitting methane from your bottom.

He taught us about death. But his dictionary used terms that were less ominous - lixivate (to be squashed and turned into liquid, both at the same time), crodsquinkled, fluckgungled, gunzleswiped and swogswallowed.

Inarguably, less menacing ways to die.

He taught us that life was not happiness but the pursuit of it. And he did it in three crisp sentences.

"Mr Wonka: "Don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted."

Charlie Bucket: "What happened?"

Mr Wonka: "He lived happily ever after."

He taught us about beards and grunginess (The Twits), to check a fruit for worms before we eat it (James and the Giant Peach), the importance of reading (Matilda), that the television was the greatest vice of our times (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and snuck in a lesson about White Supremacy and slave labour while he was at it (The Oompa Loompas).

And when he explained poverty, it spoke to us:

"There is something about very cold weather that gives one an enormous appetite. Most of us find ourselves beginning to crave rich steaming stews and hot apple pies and all kinds of delicious warming dishes; and because we are all a great deal luckier than we realise, we usually get what we want-or near enough."

That he snuck in all these life lessons, rich as Wonka and dark as his chocolate, without us noticing, is a mark of his genius.

Here's a look at seven of Dahl's greatest, quietly imparted, pieces of wisdom: