The trouble with Mrs Silver was that she gave all her love to somebody else, and that somebody else was a small tortoise called Alfie.
"The trouble with Mrs Silver was that she gave all her love to somebody else, and that somebody else was a small tortoise called Alfie." - Esio Trot
Mrs Silver appears in Roald Dahl's 1990 story Esio Trot. She lives below Mr Hoppy (who is secretly in love with her) in a block of flats with her tortoise, Alfie - her own greatest love.
A warm, kind-hearted woman, Mrs Silver is also - as Judi Dench, who plays her in the 2015 BBC One adaptation, says - "quite a dotty woman who seems to not notice her tortoise grows massively in an unbelievably short time!"
This is because Mrs Silver's main concern about Alfie is that he is too small. "Try to think how miserable it must make him feel to be so titchy! Everyone wants to grow up," she tells Mr Hoppy.
So Mr Hoppy gives her a little trick to help Alfie grow bigger...
In the 2015 film, Mrs Silver is a retired mid-wife, whereas in the original story she has a part-time job in a shop that sells newspapers and sweets.
© The Roald Dahl Story Company Limited / Quentin Blake 2018.
Roald Dahl is a registered trademark of The Roald Dahl Story Company Limited.
