George’s Marvellous Medicine

Set on a family farm, Roald Dahl's children's novel follows eight-year-old George Kranky, left alone with his bullying grandmother while his parents are out shopping. She orders him around, claims she likes eating insects, and he starts to wonder whether she is a witch. When it falls to George to give her the usual dose of medicine, he decides to brew a replacement of his own, raiding the bathroom, the laundry room, the kitchen and the garage for shampoo, floor polish, gin, animal medicines, engine oil and brown paint to copy the colour. Quentin Blake illustrated the story, Jonathan Cape first issued it in 1981, and Dahl dedicated it to doctors everywhere.

Richard Branson named it among his top 65 lifetime reads in a list he drew up for World Book Day.