WRITER EXCLUSIVE
Castles In The Sky
A new BBC radio adaptation of Howl’s Moving Castle returns Diana Wynne Jones’s wizard to Wales
Bathurst! McKenzie! Rheon! And Imrie!
EVEN THOUGH growly Welsh-born actor Christian Bale voiced the central wizard in the English dub of Studio Ghibli’s Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), few in the audience would have picked up on the fact that Howl is, in fact, Welsh. At least, he was in the original Diana Wynne Jones book, which was partially set in Wales.
It’s a wonderfully oddball aspect of the story that scriptwriter Robert Valentine was more than happy to reinstate for a new hour-long Radio 4 adaptation of Howl’s Moving Castle coming this Christmas, with Game Of Thrones’ (also very Welsh) Iwan Rheon starring as Howl.
“Once I was given the job,” says Valentine, “the first thing I did was order the book because I wasn’t familiar with the original novel, just the Ghibli version. I sat down to read it and the thing that was a real left turn –I really didn’t know this was coming – is halfway through they go to Wales! I almost cheered at that point. Completely absent from the film, of course. So yes, that’s in this version. Although most of the story is set in a – very English – fairyland, the core of this thing is that Howl is a Welshman who loves Wales, but it doesn’t love him. Beneath all his bravado, there’s this lovely kind of Welsh melancholy to him, which I love.”