Roald Dahl (IPA: /ˌroʊld ˈdɑːl/)
(13 September 1916 – 23
November 1990) was a UK novelist, short story author and screenwriter of Norwegian parentage, famous as a writer for both
children and adults.
His most popular books include Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The Witches and The BFG.
Biography
Roald Dahl was born at 32 Fairwater Road, Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales in 1916, to Norwegian parents, Harald Dahl (from Sarpsborg, Østfold) and Sofie Magdalene Dahl née Hesselberg. Dahl's
family moved from Norway and settled in Cardiff in the 1880s. Roald was named after the polar explorer Roald Amundsen, a national hero in
Norway at the time. He spoke Norwegian at home with his parents and sisters. Dahl and his sisters
were christened at the Norwegian sailors' church in Cardiff, where their
parents worshipped.
In 1920, when Roald was three, his seven-year-old sister, Astri, died from appendicitis.
About a month later, his father died of pneumonia at the age of 57. Dahl's mother, however,
decided not to return to Norway to live with her relatives but to remain in the UK, since it had been her husband's wish to have their children educated in British schools.
Dahl first attended The Cathedral School, Llandaff. At the age of
eight, he and four of his friends were caned by the headmaster after putting a dead mouse
in a jar of sweets at the local sweet shop, which was owned by a "mean and loathsome" old woman called Mrs. Pratchett (wife of
blacksmith David Pratchett). This was known amongst the five boys as the "Great Mouse Plot of
1923".
Thereafter, he was sent to several boarding schools in England including St Peter's in Weston-super-Mare. His parents wanted
Roald to be educated at an English public school and at the time, due to a then regular boat link across the Bristol Channel,
this proved to be the nearest. His time at St Peter's was an unpleasant experience for him. He was very homesick and wrote to his
mother almost every day, but never revealed to her his unhappiness. Only when she died did he find out she had saved every single
one of his letters, in small bundles held together with green tape. He later attended Repton
School in Derbyshire, where, according to his novel Boy, a friend named Michael
was viciously caned by Geoffrey Fisher – the man who later became Archbishop of Canterbury. This caused Dahl to "have doubts about religion and even about
God".
He was very tall, reaching 6'6" (1.98m) in adult life, and he was good at sports, being made captain of the school
Fives and Squash team, and also playing for the
football team. This helped his popularity. He developed an interest in
photography. During his years there, Cadbury, a
chocolate company, would occasionally send boxes of new chocolates to the school to be tested by the pupils. Dahl himself
apparently used to dream of inventing a new chocolate bar that would win the praise of Mr. Cadbury himself, and this proved the
inspiration for him to write his third book for children, Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory.
Throughout his childhood and adolescent years, he spent his summer holidays in his parents' native Norway, mostly enjoying the
Fjords. His childhood is the subject of his autobiographical work, Boy: Tales of
Childhood.
After finishing his schooling, he spent three weeks hiking through Newfoundland with a group called the Public Schools' Exploring Society (now known as
BSES Expeditions). In July 1934, he joined the Shell Petroleum Company. Following two years of training in the UK, he was transferred to Dar-es-Salaam, Tanganyika (now Tanzania). Along with the only two other Shell employees in
the entire territory, he lived in luxury in the Shell House outside Dar-es-Salaam, with a cook and personal servants. While on the job, supplying oil
to customers across Tanganyika, he encountered black mambas and lions, amongst other wildlife.
World War II
In August 1939, as World War II was imminent, plans were made to round up the hundreds
of Germans in Dar-es-Salaam. Dahl was made officer in the
King's African Rifles, commanding a platoon of askaris. Dahl was uncomfortable about having to detain hundreds of German nationals, but managed to complete his
orders.
Soon after this, in November 1939, he joined the Royal Air Force. After a 600-mile
car journey from Dar-es-Salaam to Nairobi, he was accepted for flight training with 20 other
men, 17 of whom would later die in air combat. With seven hours and 40 minutes experience in a De Havilland Tiger Moth he flew solo; Dahl enjoyed watching the wildlife of Kenya during his flights. He continued on to advanced flying training in Iraq, at
RAF Habbaniya, 50 miles west of Baghdad. Following six
months training on Hawker Harts, Dahl was made a Pilot
Officer.
He was assigned to No. 80 Squadron RAF, flying obsolete Gloster Gladiators, the last biplane fighter plane used by the RAF. Dahl was surprised to find that he would not receive any specialised
training in aerial combat, or in regard to flying Gladiators. On 19 September 1940, Dahl was ordered to fly his Gladiator from Abu Sueir in Egypt, on to Amiriya to refuel, and again to Fouka in
Libya for a second refuelling. From there he would fly to 80 Squadron's forward airstrip 30 miles south of Mersa Matruh. On the final leg, he could not
find the airstrip and, running low on fuel and with night approaching, he was forced to attempt a
landing in the desert. Unfortunately, the undercarriage hit a boulder
and the plane crashed, fracturing his skull, smashing his nose in, and blinding him. He
managed to drag himself away from the blazing wreckage and passed out. Later, he wrote about the crash for his first published
work (see below). It was found in a RAF inquiry into the crash that the location he had been told to fly to was completely wrong,
and he had mistakenly been sent instead to the no man's land between the Allied and
Italian forces.
Dahl was rescued and taken to a first-aid post in Mersa Matruh, where he regained
consciousness, but not his sight, and was then taken by train to the Royal Navy hospital in Alexandria. There he fell in and out of love with a nurse, Mary Welland. Dahl had fallen in love with her
voice while he was blind, but once he regained his sight, decided that he no longer loved her. Doctors said he had no chance of
flying again, but in February 1941, five months after he was admitted to the hospital, he was discharged and passed fully fit for
flying duties.
By this time, 80 Squadron had been transferred to the Greek campaign and based at
Eleusina, near Athens. The squadron was now equipped with
Hawker Hurricanes. Dahl flew a replacement Hurricane across the Mediterranean Sea in
April 1941, after seven hours flying Hurricanes. By this stage in the Greek campaign, the RAF had only 18 combat planes in
Greece: 14 Hurricanes and four Bristol Blenheim light bombers.
Dahl saw his first aerial combat on 15 April, while flying alone over the city of
Chalcis. He attacked six Junkers Ju-88s that were bombing
ships. Dahl managed to shoot one down. On 16 April in another air battle, he shot down another
Ju-88.
On 20 April Dahl took part in the "Battle of Athens", alongside the highest-scoring British
Commonwealth ace of World War II, Pat Pattle and Dahl's friend David Coke. Five Hurricanes were shot down and four of their pilots killed, including Pattle.
As the Germans were pressing on Athens, Dahl was evacuated to Egypt. His squadron was reassembled in Haifa. From here, Dahl flew missions every day for a period of four weeks, downing a Potez 63 on June 8 and another Ju-88 on 15 June, but he then began to get
severe headaches that caused him to black out, and he was invalided home to Britain. At this
time his rank was Flight Lieutenant.
Dahl began writing in 1942, after he was transferred to Washington as Assistant
Air Attaché. His first published work, in the August 1,
1942 issue of the Saturday Evening Post was "Shot Down Over Libya", describing the crash of
his Gloster Gladiator. C. S. Forester had asked Dahl to write down some RAF anecdotes so
that he could shape them into a story. After Forester sat down to read what Dahl had given him, he decided to publish it exactly
as it was. The original title of the article was A Piece of Cake — the title was changed to sound more dramatic, despite
the fact that the he was not "shot down".
During the war, Forester worked for the British Information Service and was writing propaganda for the Allied cause, mainly
for American consumption.[1] This work introduced Dahl to
espionage and the activities of the Canadian spymaster William Stephenson, known by
the codename "Intrepid". During the war, Dahl supplied intelligence from Washington to Stephenson and his organization, which was
known as British Security Coordination. Dahl was sent back to Britain, for
supposed misconduct by British Embassy officials: "I got booted out by the big boys," he said. Stephenson sent him back to
Washington — with a promotion.[2] After the war Dahl wrote
some of the history of the secret organization and he and Stephenson remained friends for decades after the war.[3]
He ended the war as a Wing Commander. His record of five aerial victories has
been confirmed by post-war research and cross-referenced in Axis records.[4]
Later life
Family
He married Academy Award winning American actress Patricia Neal on July 2 1953, at Trinity Church in
New York City. They were married for 30 years and had five children: Olivia (died of
measles encephalitis, aged seven), Tessa, Theo, Ophelia, and Lucy.
When he was four months old, Theo Dahl was severely injured when his baby carriage was hit by a taxi in New York City. For a
time he suffered from hydrocephalus: as a result his father became involved in the
development of what became known as the "Wade-Dahl-Till" (or WDT) valve, a device to alleviate the condition.[5]
In 1965, Patricia Neal suffered three burst cerebral aneurysms while pregnant with
their fifth child, Lucy. Roald took control of her rehabilitation and she eventually relearned to talk and walk. They were
divorced in 1983 following a very turbulent marriage, and he subsequently married Felicity ("Liccy") d'Abreu Crosland (b.
December 12 1938), Neal's then-best friend, to whom he was
married until his death.
Ophelia Dahl is director and co-founder (with doctor Paul
Farmer) of Partners in Health, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to providing
health care to some of the most impoverished communities in the world. Lucy Dahl is a screenwriter in Los Angeles. Tessa's
daughter (who was the inspiration for Sophie, the main character in her grandfather's book The
BFG) is model and author Sophie Dahl who remembers him as "a very difficult man –
very strong, very dominant ... not unlike the father of the Mitford sisters sort of roaring round the house with these very loud
opinions, banning certain types – foppish boys, you know – from coming round."
Perceived Anti-Semitism
In the summer of 1983, he wrote a book review for the Literary Review of
God Cried by Newsweek writer Tony Clifton, a picture book about the invasion of
Lebanon by Israel. Dahl's review stated that the
Israeli attack on Lebanon in June 1982 was when "we all started hating Israel," and
that the book would make readers "violently anti-Israeli". According to biographer Jeremy Treglown, Dahl had originally written
"when we all started hating Jews" - but editor Gillian Greenwood of the Literary
Review changed Dahl's terms from "Jews" and "Jewish" to "Israel" and "Israeli". On the basis of the published version, Dahl
would later claim, "I am not anti-Semitic. I am anti-Israel."[6]
He told a reporter in 1983 that: "There is a streak in the Jewish character that does provoke
animosity".[7] He further exclaimed, that even a miserable
man such as Hitler did not pick on them for no reason.[8]
Nonetheless, according to Treglown, Dahl maintained friendships with a handful of individual Jews.[9]
In later years, Dahl occasionally tried to downplay some of the accusations of anti-Semitism. He included a sympathetic
episode about German-Jewish refugees in his book Going
Solo, and on another occasion he claimed that he was opposed to injustice, not Jews.[10] He never retreated from his strong stance against Israel, however, and shortly
before his death in 1990 he told the British newspaper The Independent, "I'm
certainly anti- Israeli and I've become anti-Semitic in as much as that you get a Jewish person in another country like England
strongly supporting Zionism," and he added that Jews "control the media."[11]
Death and legacy
Roald Dahl died in November 1990 at the age of 74 of a rare blood disease, myelodysplastic anaemia, at his home, Gipsy House in
Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, and was
buried in the cemetery at the parish church of St Peter and St Paul. According to his granddaughter, the family gave him a "sort
of Viking funeral". He was buried with his snooker cues, some very good burgundy, chocolates, HB pencils and a power saw." In his
honour, the Roald Dahl Children's Gallery was opened at Buckinghamshire County Museum in nearby Aylesbury.
In 2002, one of Cardiff's modern landmarks, the historic Oval Basin plaza, was re-christened
"Roald Dahl Plass". "Plass" means plaza in Norwegian, a nod to the acclaimed late writer's Norwegian roots. There have also been calls from the
public for a permanent statue of him to be erected in the city.
Dahl's charitable commitments in the fields of neurology, haematology and literacy have been continued by his widow since his death,
through the Roald Dahl Foundation. In June 2005, the Roald Dahl Museum and
Story Centre opened in Great Missenden to celebrate the work of Roald Dahl and
advance his work in literacy.
Roald Dahl Day
The anniversary of Dahl's birthday on 13 September has recently become widely celebrated
as Roald Dahl Day.[12][13] On 13 September 2007 Google honoured the day by a reworking of its famous logo on its main search page, replacing some of the letters with items and characters from books.
Avid reader Matilda (from the novel Matilda) could be seen sitting on the "G"
surrounded by a pile of books. The second "o" was replaced by a peach floating on water with a tiny figure aboard it, from
James and the Giant Peach. Finally, the "l" was replaced with a
partially-unwrapped chocolate bar with a Golden Ticket inside (from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).[14]
Writing
Dahl's first published work, inspired by a meeting with C. S. Forester, was Shot
Down Over Libya. Today the story is published as "A Piece of Cake". The story, about his wartime adventures, was bought by
the Saturday Evening Post for $900, and propelled him into a career as a writer. Its title was inspired by a highly
inaccurate and sensationalized article about the crash that blinded him, which claimed he had been shot down instead of simply
having to land due to low fuel.
His first children's book was The Gremlins, about mischievous little creatures
that were part of RAF folklore. The book was commissioned by Walt Disney for a film that was
never made, and published in 1943. Dahl went on to create some of the best-loved children's stories of the 20th century, such as
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and James and the Giant Peach.
He also had a successful parallel career as the writer of macabre adult short stories, usually with a dark sense of humour and
a surprise ending. Many were originally written for American magazines such as Ladies
Home Journal, Harper's, Playboy and The New Yorker, then subsequently collected by
Dahl into anthologies, gaining world-wide acclaim. Dahl wrote more than 60 short stories and they have appeared in numerous
collections, some only being published in book form after his death. See List
of Roald Dahl short stories. His stories also brought him three Edgar Awards: in
1954, for the collection Someone Like You; in 1959, for the story The
Landlady; and in 1980, for the episode of Tales of the
Unexpected based on "Skin".
One of his more famous adult stories, The Smoker (also known as Man from the South), was filmed as an episode of
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and also adapted into Quentin Tarantino's segment of
the 1995 film Four Rooms. This bizarre, oft-anthologized, suspense classic concerns a man
residing in Jamaica who wagers with visitors in an attempt to claim the fingers from their hands.
His short story collection Tales of the Unexpected was adapted to a successful TV series of the same name. When the
stock of Dahl's own original stories was exhausted, the series continued by adapting stories by authors that were written in
Dahl's style, including the American writers John Collier and Stanley Ellin.
A number of his short stories are supposed to be extracts from the diary of his (fictional) Uncle Oswald, a rich gentleman
whose sexual exploits form the subject of these stories.
For a brief, relatively unsuccessful period in the 1960s, Dahl wrote screenplays. Two of his screenplays – the
James Bond film You Only Live
Twice and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – were adaptations of
novels by Ian Fleming. Dahl also wrote an initial draft adapting his own novel Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory, which was heavily rewritten by David Seltzer, and produced
as the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
(1971). Dahl later disowned the film.
Memories with Food at Gipsy House, written with his wife Felicity and published posthumously in 1991, was a mixture of
recipes, family reminiscences and Dahl's musings on favourite subjects such as chocolate, onions, and claret.
Children's fiction
Dahl's childrens' works are usually told from the point of view of a child. They typically involve adult villainesses who hate and mistreat children, and feature at least one "good" adult to counteract the villain(s).
These stock characters are possibly a reference to the abuse that Dahl himself experienced in the boarding schools he attended. They usually contain a lot of black
humour and grotesque scenarios, including gruesome violence. The Witches,
George's Marvelous Medicine and Matilda are examples of this formula. The BFG follows it in a
more analogous way with the good giant (the BFG or "Big Friendly Giant") representing the "good adult" archetype and the other
giants being the "bad adults". This formula is also somewhat evident in Dahl's film script for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Class-conscious themes – ranging from the thinly veiled to
the blatant – also surface in works such as Fantastic Mr Fox and
Danny, the Champion of the World. Dahl also features in his
books characters that are very fat, usually children. Augustus Gloop, Bruce Bogtrotter,
and Bruno Jenkins are a few of these characters, although an enormous woman named Aunt Sponge is featured in James and The
Giant Peach. All of these characters (with the possible exception of Bruce Bogtrotter) are either villains or simply
unpleasant gluttons. They are usually punished for this: Augustus Gloop drinks from Willy Wonka's chocolate river, despite the
adults telling him not to, and falls in, getting sucked up a pipe and nearly being turned into fudge. Bruce Bogtrotter steals
cake from the evil headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, and is forced to eat a gigantic chocolate cake in front of the school. Bruno
Jenkins is turned into a mouse by witches and, it is speculated, possibly disowned or even killed by his parents because of this.
Aunt Sponge is flattened by a giant peach.
Dahl's mother used to tell him and his sisters tales about trolls and other mythical Norwegian creatures and some of his
children's books contain references or elements inspired by these stories, such as the giants in The BFG.
Many of his children's books are illustrated by Quentin Blake.
List of works
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Children's writing
Children's stories
Children's poetry
Adult fiction
Novels
Short story collections
See the alphabetical List of Roald Dahl short stories. See also
Roald Dahl: Collected Stories for a complete, chronological
listing.
Non-fiction
Plays
- The Honeys (1955.) Produced at the Longacre Theater on Broadway.
Film scripts
Television
- Way Out (1961) Horror series produced by David
Susskind
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes written by Roald Dahl:
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Lamb to the Slaughter" (1958)
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Dip in the Pool" (1958)
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Poison" (1958)
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Man from the South" (1960)
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat" (1960)
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "The Landlady" (1961)
- Tales of the Unexpected (TV series) (1979-88), episodes
written and introduced by Roald Dahl.
Sources
References
- ^ Cambridge Guide to Literature (Cambridge University Press, 1989)
ISBN 0-521-26751-X.
- ^ Bill Macdonald - The True Intrepid p249 (Raincoast 2001)ISBN
1-55192-418-8 Dahl also speaks about his espionage work in the documentary The True Intrepid
- ^ Macdonald - The True Intrepid p243 ISBN 1-55192-418-8.
- ^ Christopher Shores and Clive Williams – Aces High: A Tribute to the Most
Notable Fighter Pilots of the British and Commonwealth Air Forces in WWII (Grub Street Publishing, 1994) ISBN
1-898697-00-0.
- ^ Water on the Brain. MedGadget: Internet Journal of Emerging Medical Technologies
(2005-07-15). Retrieved on 2006-05-11.
- ^ Roald Dahl An Autobiography, Jeremy Treglown (Farrar, Straus,
Giroux, 1994), pp. 255-256.
- ^ Philip Howard, ‘Dahl, Roald (1916–1990)’, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2006 accessed 16 Sept 2007
- ^ Philip Howard, ‘Dahl, Roald (1916–1990)’, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2006 accessed 16 Sept 2007
- ^ Treglown, p. 255
- ^ Treglown, p. 258
- ^ Brian Appleyard. "Interview: Roald and the promiscuous girl." The
Independent (London), March. 21, 1990, p. 15.
- ^ Roald Dahl Day celebrations, Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre (accessed 20 Sept 2007)
- ^ Roald Dahl's 90th Birthday!, Random House UK (accessed 20 Sept 2007)
- ^ "Google Search Page Today Features Children's Author Roald Dahl: Google logo repurposed to showcase items and
characters", SEO/SEM Journal, SYS-CON Publications (accessed 20 Sept 2007)
- ^ Source: written for a leaflet published in 1986 by Sandwell Health
Authority (now Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS
Trust). Reproduced at http://www.blacktriangle.org/blog/?p=715.
External links
audio reading
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