Stylist takes a trip down memory lane remembering the children’s books that influenced who we’ve become – and still have the power to make us smile.

Want to ignite a heated debate in the pub? Forget the spending cuts, coalition or superinjunctions. Simply murmur the words, “Which was better, Fraggle Rock or The Muppet Show?” We guarantee that come closing time you’ll still be bitterly debating the relative merits of Barbie versus Sindy, Button Moon versus Bagpuss. Childhood paraphernalia is a subject no adult will tire of, and we all have one TV show, book or pop group which we could happily tackle on Mastermind. But of all these cultural reference points from our childhoods, few provokes as powerful a reaction as the books of Roald Dahl.

From the loathsome Twits to the loveable Matilda, nobody could tap into a child’s imagination like Dahl, who – in his 20 children’s titles – depicted the perfect child’s world without ever being cloyingly sweet or descending into cliche. Bringing Dahl’s wicked prose to life were the equally evocative illustrations by the artist Quentin Blake. A former Punch cartoonist who’d considered a teaching career before earning a reputation as a reliable illustrator of children’s books, Blake’s deceptively simple drawings were a perfect match for Dahl’s dark-yet-enticing fictional world. His personality-filled inky scribbles brought Dahl’s characters to life and their collaboration lasted 15 years, from 1975 until Dahl’s death in 1990.

Blake’s illustrations are truly iconic for our generation, with the power to reduce grown adults to a state of giddy excitement. Michelle Obama, the Queen and Angelina Jolie have all graced the cover of Stylist, but when news broke that we’d secured Blake as a cover artist we all became 20 years younger.

Of course it isn’t just Dahl and Blake’s fabulous sponsored_longform. A multitude of books define our childhood. Decades on, we still only have to see a can of ginger beer to think of the moonlit midnight feasts at Enid Blyton’s St Clare’s or a Turkish Delight to conjure up images of Edmund and Narnia’s White Witch to be transported back to the age of eight, underneath the covers with a torch because your mum’s already ordered lights out.

The books we never outgrow