Cardiff Road, Llandaff Cardiff Cardiff CF5 2YH Wales, United Kingdom
Dahl attended The Cathedral School, Llandaff.
Gallery of Roald Dahl
Repton Derbyshire DE65 6FH England
From 1929, when he was 13, Dahl attended Repton School in Derbyshire.
College/University
Career
Gallery of Roald Dahl
Dahl's leather flying helmet on display in the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in Great Missenden
Gallery of Roald Dahl
Dahl was flying a Gloster Gladiator when he crash landed in Libya.
Gallery of Roald Dahl
Dahl as a fighter pilot
Gallery of Roald Dahl
Dahl as a fighter pilot in the RAF walking with Ernest Hemingway
Gallery of Roald Dahl
1961
Roald Dahl
Gallery of Roald Dahl
1965
Roald Dahl
Gallery of Roald Dahl
1971
Roald Dahl
Gallery of Roald Dahl
1976
Roald Dahl
Gallery of Roald Dahl
1982
Dahl
Gallery of Roald Dahl
1988
Dahl signing books in Amsterdam, Netherlands
Gallery of Roald Dahl
1988
Roald Dahl autographing books in Dun Laoghaire shopping centre (Photo by Independent News and Media).
Gallery of Roald Dahl
1988
Roald Dahl signing autographs at the Westbury Hotel where he launched the MS Readathon for the Multiple Sclerosis Scoiety of Ireland (Photo by Independent News and Media).
Roald Dahl signing autographs at the Westbury Hotel where he launched the MS Readathon for the Multiple Sclerosis Scoiety of Ireland (Photo by Independent News and Media).
(Did you think Cinderella married the prince and lived hap...)
Did you think Cinderella married the prince and lived happily ever after, or that the three little pigs outsmarted the wolf? Think again! Master storyteller Roald Dahl adds his own darkly comic twists to six favorite tales, complete with rambunctious rhymes and hilarious surprise endings.
(The Gremlins is the story of Gus, a British World War II ...)
The Gremlins is the story of Gus, a British World War II fighter pilot, who during the Battle of Britain turned to look out on the wing of his plane only to see an amazing sight, a little man, no more than six inches tall with horns growing from his head, drilling a hole in the plane's wing.
(Here, in Roald Dahl's first collection of his world-famou...)
Here, in Roald Dahl's first collection of his world-famous dark and sinister adult stories, a wife serves a dish that baffles the police, a harmless bet suddenly becomes anything but; a curious machine reveals a horrifying truth about plants and a man lies awake waiting to be bitten by the venomous snake asleep on his stomach.
(The Landlady is taken from the short story collection Kis...)
The Landlady is taken from the short story collection Kiss Kiss, which includes ten other devious and shocking stories, featuring the wife who pawns the mink coat from her lover with unexpected results, the priceless piece of furniture that is the subject of a deceitful bargain, a wronged woman taking revenge on her dead husband, and others.
(What could go wrong when a wife pawns the mink coat that ...)
What could go wrong when a wife pawns the mink coat that her lover gave her as a parting gift? What happens when a priceless piece of furniture is the subject of a deceitful bargain? Can a wronged woman take revenge on her dead husband?
(Roald Dahl was a champion of the underdog and all things ...)
Roald Dahl was a champion of the underdog and all things little, in this case, an orphaned boy oppressed by two nasty, self-centered aunts. How James escapes his miserable life with the horrible aunts and becomes a hero is a Dahlicious fantasy of the highest order. You will never forget resourceful little James and his new family of magically overgrown insects, a ladybug, a spider, a grasshopper, a glowworm, a silkworm, and the chronic complainer, a centipede with a hundred gorgeous shoes.
(Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory is opening at last...)
Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory is opening at last! But only five lucky children will be allowed inside. And the winners are, Augustus Gloop, an enormously fat boy whose hobby is eating. Veruca Salt, a spoiled-rotten brat whose parents are wrapped around her little finger. Violet Beauregarde, a dim-witted gum-chewer with the fastest jaws around. Mike Teavee, a toy pistol-toting gangster-in-training who is obsessed with television, and Charlie Bucket, Our Hero, a boy who is honest and kind, brave and true, and good and ready for the wildest time of his life!
(To the Gregg family, hunting is just plain fun. To the gi...)
To the Gregg family, hunting is just plain fun. To the girl who lives next door, it's just plain horrible. She tries to be polite. She tries to talk them out of it, but the Greggs only laugh at her. Then one day the Greggs go too far, and the little girl turns her Magic Finger on them.
(Last seen flying through the sky in a giant elevator in C...)
Last seen flying through the sky in a giant elevator in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie Bucket's back for another adventure. When the giant elevator picks up speed, Charlie, Willy Wonka, and the gang are sent hurtling through space and time.
(Danny has a life any boy would love his home is a gypsy c...)
Danny has a life any boy would love his home is a gypsy caravan, he's the youngest master car mechanic around, and his best friend is his dad, who never runs out of wonderful stories to tell. But one night Danny discovers a shocking secret that his father has kept hidden for years. Soon Danny finds himself the mastermind behind the most incredible plot ever attempted against nasty Victor Hazell, a wealthy landowner with a bad attitude. Can they pull it off?
(Meet the boy who can talk to animals, the man who can see...)
Meet the boy who can talk to animals, the man who can see with his eyes closed, and find out about the treasure buried deep underground on Thistley Green. Here are seven superb stories, full of Roald Dahl's usual magic, mystery, and suspense.
(The Enormous Crocodile is a horrid greedy scrumptious bru...)
The Enormous Crocodile is a horrid greedy scrumptious brute who loves to guzzle up little boys and girls. But the other animals have had enough of his cunning tricks, so they scheme to get the better of this foul fiend, once and for all!
(Take a pinch of unease. Stir it into a large dollop of th...)
Take a pinch of unease. Stir it into a large dollop of the macabre, add a generous helping of dark and stylish wit, garnish with the bizarre, and what do you have?
(Meet Oswald Hendryks Cornelius, Roald Dahl's most disgrac...)
Meet Oswald Hendryks Cornelius, Roald Dahl's most disgraceful and extraordinary character Aside from being thoroughly debauched, strikingly attractive, and astonishingly wealthy, Uncle Oswald was the greatest bounder, bon vivant, and fornicator of all time.
(Mr. and Mrs. Twit are the smelliest, nastiest, ugliest pe...)
Mr. and Mrs. Twit are the smelliest, nastiest, ugliest people in the world. They hate everything except playing mean jokes on each other, catching innocent birds to put in their Bird Pies, and making their caged monkeys, the Muggle-Wumps, stand on their heads all day. But the Muggle-Wumps have had enough. They don't just want out, they want revenge.
(George is alone in the house with Grandma. The most horri...)
George is alone in the house with Grandma. The most horrid, grizzly old grunion of a grandma ever. She needs something stronger than her usual medicine to cure her grouchiness. A special grandma medicine, a remedy for everything. And George knows just what to put into it. Grandma's in for the surprise of her life and so is George, when he sees the results of his mixture!
(The BFG is no ordinary bone-crunching giant. He is far to...)
The BFG is no ordinary bone-crunching giant. He is far too nice and jumbly. It's lucky for Sophie that he is. Had she been carried off in the middle of the night by the Bloodbottler, or any of the other giants rather than the BFG, she would have soon become breakfast. When Sophie hears that the giants are flush-bunking off to England to swollomp a few nice little tiddlers, she decides she must stop them once and for all. And the BFG is going to help her!
(Grandmamma loves to tell about witches. Real witches are ...)
Grandmamma loves to tell about witches. Real witches are the most dangerous of all living creatures on earth. There's nothing they hate so much as children, and they work all kinds of terrifying spells to get rid of them. Her grandson listens closely to Grandmamma's stories but nothing can prepare him for the day he comes face-to-face with The Grand High Witch herself!
(Who better to investigate the literary spirit world than ...)
Who better to investigate the literary spirit world than that supreme connoisseur of the unexpected, Roald Dahl? Of the many permutations of the macabre or bizarre, Dahl was always especially fascinated by the classic ghost story.
(A collection of grisly beasts out for human blood, rangin...)
A collection of grisly beasts out for human blood, ranging from Gocky-Wock the crocodile to Sting-A-Ling the scorpion. Described in verse with all Dahl's usual gusto and illustrated in suitably lurid style by Quentin Blake.
(From his own life, of course! As full of excitement and t...)
From his own life, of course! As full of excitement and the unexpected as his world-famous, best-selling books, Roald Dahl's tales of his own childhood are completely fascinating and fiendishly funny. Did you know that Roald Dahl nearly lost his nose in a car accident? Or that he was once a chocolate candy tester for Cadbury's?
(The Ladderless Window-Cleaning Company certainly doesn't....)
The Ladderless Window-Cleaning Company certainly doesn't. They don’t need a pail, either, because they have a pelican with a bucket-sized beak. With a monkey to do the washing and Billy as their manager, this business is destined for success. Now they have their big break, a chance to clean all 677 windows of the Hampshire House, owned by the richest man in all of England!
(Matilda is a sweet, exceptional young girl, but her paren...)
Matilda is a sweet, exceptional young girl, but her parents think she's just a nuisance. She expects school to be different but there she has to face Miss Trunchbull, a kid-hating terror of a headmistress. When Matilda is attacked by the Trunchbull she suddenly discovers she has a remarkable power with which to fight back.
(The sweet scents of rural life infuse this beautifully cr...)
The sweet scents of rural life infuse this beautifully crafted collection of Roald Dahl’s country stories, but there is always something unexpected lurking in the undergrowth. Whether it is taking a troublesome cow to be mated with a prime bull, dealing with a rat-infested hayrick, learning the ways and means of maggot farming or describing the fine art of poaching pheasants using nothing but raisins and sleeping pills, Roald Dahl brings his stories of everyday country folk and their strange passions wonderfully to life.
(Mr. Hoppy really loves his neighbor Mrs. Silver, and Mrs....)
Mr. Hoppy really loves his neighbor Mrs. Silver, and Mrs. Silver really loves her tortoise, Alfie. One day Mrs. Silver asks Mr. Hoppy how to make Alfie grow, and suddenly Mr. Hoppy knows the way to win her heart. With the help of a magical spell and some cabbage leaves, can Mr. Hoppy be happy at last?
(Little Billy strays into the forest, where he meets the M...)
Little Billy strays into the forest, where he meets the Minpins?tiny people who live within the trees. The Minpins tell Billy about The Gruncher, who preys on them. So Billy embarks on a mission to rid the Minpins of their foe once and for all, and sets off? on the back of a swan?
(The Reverend Lee is suffering from a rare and acutely emb...)
The Reverend Lee is suffering from a rare and acutely embarrassing condition: Back-to-Front Dyslexia. It affects only his speech, and he doesn’t realize he’s doing it, but the parishioners of Nibbleswicke are shocked and confused by seemingly outrageous comments.
(A wonderful collection of works from the popular author o...)
A wonderful collection of works from the popular author of The BFG, includes portions of his autobiography, notes written prior to the publication of Esio Trot, and an assortment of unpublished work, such as Christmas cards, personal letters, and songs.
Roald Dahl was a Welsh writer of both children's fiction and short stories for adults. He is best known as the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the story of a poor boy who because of his honesty is selected by Willy Wonka to be the new owner of his world-famous chocolate factory. Dahl has been described as a master of story construction with a remarkable ability to weave a tale.
Background
Dahl was born on September 13, 1916 in Llandaff, South Wales, United Kingdom to Norwegian parents, and spent his childhood summers visiting his grandparents in Oslo, Norway. His first language was Norwegian, which he spoke at home with his parents and his sisters Astri, Alfhild and Else.
Education
After his father died when Dahl was four, his mother abided by her late husband's wish that Dahl be sent to English schools. Dahl subsequently attended Llandaff Cathedral School, where he began a series of academic misadventures. After he and several other students were severely beaten by the headmaster for placing a dead mouse in a cruel storekeeper's candy jar, Dahl's mother moved him to St. Peter's Boarding School and later to Repton, a renowned private school. Dahl would later describe his school years as "days of horrors" which inspired much of his macabre fiction.
In 1934 Dahl took a position with the Shell Oil Company in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), Africa. In 1939 he joined a Royal Air Force training squadron in Nairobi, Kenya, serving as a fighter pilot in the Mediterranean. Dahl suffered severe head injuries in a plane crash near Alexandria, Egypt; upon recovering he was transferred to the British Embassy in Washington, D. C., as an assistant air attache. As part of his duties as assistant air attaché, Dahl was to help neutralise the isolationist views still held by many Americans by giving pro-British speeches and discussing his war service. Dahl was promoted to flight lieutenant (war-substantive) in August 1942.
During the war, Dahl also supplied intelligence from Washington to Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Upon the war's conclusion, Dahl held the rank of a temporary wing commander (substantive flight lieutenant). Owing to the severity of his injuries from the 1940 accident, he was pronounced unfit for further service and was invalided out of the RAF in August 1946. He left the service with the substantive rank of squadron leader.
In 1943, Dahl wrote his first children's story, and coined a term, with The Gremlins. Gremlins were tiny saboteurs who lived on fighter planes and bombers and were responsible for all crashes. Mrs. Roosevelt, the president's wife, read the book to her children and liked it so much that she invited Dahl to dinner, and he and the president soon became friends.
Through the 1940s and into the 1950s Dahl continued as a short story writer for adults, establishing his reputation as a writer of macabre tales with an unexpected twist. Dahl wrote more than 60 short stories; they have appeared in numerous collections, some only being published in book form after his death.
As the father of five children, Dahl began making up stories for them each night before they went to bed. These stories became the basis for his career as a children's writer, which began in earnest with the publication of James and the Giant Peach in 1961. Dahl went on to create some other of the best-loved children's stories of the 20th century, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG, The Twits and George's Marvellous Medicine.
For a brief period in the 1960s, Dahl wrote screenplays. Two, the James Bond film You Only Live Twice and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, were adaptations of novels by Ian Fleming. Dahl also began adapting his own novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was completed and rewritten by David Seltzer after Dahl failed to meet deadlines, and produced as the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
Critical response to Dahl's children's books has varied from praising him as a genius to declaring his works racist and harmful. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is his most popular and most controversial children's story. Many critics have censured this work for its alleged stereotyping and inhumanity, and have accused Dahl of racism for his portrayal of the Oompa-Loompas: in the original version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, they are described as black pygmies from deepest Africa who sing and dance and work for nearly nothing. In a revised edition, Dahl changed their appearance and gave them a mythical homeland.
Dahl's supporters have argued that in Charlie, as in his other children's books, Dahl follows the traditional fairy tale style, which includes extreme exaggeration and the swift and horrible destruction of evildoers; they contend that children are not harmed by this approach. Critics have compared Dahl's adult-oriented fiction to the works of Guy de Maupassant, O. Henry, and Saki. Praised by commentators as well crafted and suspenseful, Dahl's stories employ surprise endings and shrewd characters who are rarely what they seem to be.
Gerald Haigh, writing in Times Literary Supplement, said that Dahl had the ability to "home unerringly in on the very nub of childish delight, with brazen and glorious disregard for what is likely to furrow the adult brow." One way that Dahl delighted his readers was to exact often vicious revenge on cruel adults who harmed children. In Matilda, the Amazonian headmistress Miss Turnbull, who deals with unruly children by grabbing them by the hair and tossing them out windows, is finally banished by the brilliant, triumphant Matilda. The Witches, released as a movie in 1990, finds the heroic young character, who has been turned into a mouse, thwarting the hideous and diabolical witches who are planning to kill all the children of England. But even innocent adults receive rough treatment: parents are killed in car crashes in The Witches, and eaten by a rhinoceros in James and the Giant Peach; aunts are flattened by a giant peach in James and the Giant Peach; and pleasant fathers are murdered in Matilda. Many critics have objected to the rough treatment of adults.
However, Dahl explained in the New York Times Book Review that the children who wrote to him "invariably pick out the most gruesome events as the favorite parts of the books....They don't relate it to life. They enjoy the fantasy. And my nastiness is never gratuitous. It's retribution. Beastly people must be punished." In Trust Your Children: Voices Against Censorship in Children's Literature, Dahl contended that adults may be disturbed by his books "because they are not quite as aware as I am that children are different from adults. Children are much more vulgar than grownups. They have a coarser sense of humor. They are basically more cruel."
Dahl often commented that the key to his success with children was that he conspired with them against adults. Vicki Weissman, in her review of Matilda in the New York Times Book Review, agreed that Dahl's books are aimed to please children rather than adults in a number of ways. She thought that "the truths of death and torture are as distant as when the magician saws the lady in half," and delighted that "anarchic and patently impossible plots romp along with no regard at all for the even faintly likely." Just as children are more vulgar than adults, so too do they have more tolerance for undeveloped characters, loose linking of events, ludicrous word play, and mind-boggling plot twists.
Eric Hadley, in his sketch of Dahl in Twentieth Century Children's Writers, suggested that the "sense of sharing, of joining with Dahl in a game or plot, is crucial: you admire him and his cleverness, not his characters." The result, according to Hadley, is that the audience has the "pleasure of feeling that they are in on a tremendous joke."
Quotations:
"Children are a great discipline because they are highly critical. And they lose interest so quickly. You have to keep things ticking along. And if you think a child is getting bored, you must think up something that jolts it back. Something that tickles. You have to know what children like."
"The writer for children must be a jokey sort of a fellow... He must like simple tricks and jokes and riddles and other childish things. He must be unconventional and inventive. He must have a really first-class plot."
"The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to go to work.... Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained. For those two hours he has been miles away, he has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into normal surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock. The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope, and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it."
"A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely." - The Twits
"Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog." - Matilda
"There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven’t started wondering about yet." - James and the Giant Peach
"The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world all to themselves." - The BFG
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams." - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
"I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it, and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be." - My Uncle Oswald
"If you are good, life is good." - Matilda
"Well, maybe it started that way. As a dream, but doesn’t everything. Those buildings. These lights. This whole city. Somebody had to dream about it first. And maybe that is what I did. I dreamed about coming here, but then I did it." - James and the Giant Peach
"I understand what you’re saying, and your comments are valuable, but I’m gonna ignore your advice." - Fantastic Mr. Fox
"Don’t gobblefunk around with words." - The BFG
"A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it." - Boy: Tales of Childhood
"A little magic can take you a long way." - James and the Giant Peach
Personality
As a writer, Dahl encountered difficulty in developing plots. He filled an old school exercise book with ideas that he had jotted down in pencil, crayon, or whatever was handy, and insisted in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More that every story he had ever written, for adults or for children, "started out as a three-or four-line note in this little, much-worn, red-covered volume." And each book was written in a tiny brick hut in the apple orchard about two hundred yards away from his home in Buckinghamshire, England. The little hut was rarely cleaned, and the walls were lined with "ill-fitting sheets of polystyrene, yellow with age and tobacco smoke, and spiders ... [making] pretty webs in the upper corners," Dahl once declared. "The room itself is of no consequence. It is out of focus, a place for dreaming and floating and whistling in the wind, as soft and silent and murky as a womb."
Quotes from others about the person
"His stories are not only unfailingly clever, they are, many of them, about cleverness." - Michael Wood
"Dahl caters to the streak of sadism in children which they don't even realize is there because they are not fully self-aware and are not experienced enough to understand what sadism is." - Eleanor Cameron
"The message with which we close the book is that the needs and desires and opinions of old people are totally irrelevant and inconsequential." - Myra Pollack Sadker and David Miller Sadker (about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
"Arguably the Shakespeare of children's literature, from Fantastic Mr Fox to Matilda and The BFG, filmmakers and animators are still drawing from the enormous vat of material he created." - "Britain's top ten children's literature superstars". The Independent, 2012.
"He [Dahl] was mischievous. A grown-up being mischievous. He addresses you, a child, as somebody who knows about the world. He was a grown-up – and he was bigger than most – who is on your side. That must have something to do with it." - Quentin Blake
Interests
Paintings, furniture, gardening, photography
Writers
Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Frederick Marryat
Sport & Clubs
Cricket, swimming, football
Connections
In 1953 Dahl married Hollywood actress Patricia Neal, star of such movies as The Fountainhead and, later, Hud, for which she won an Academy Award. Dahl recalled in Pat and Roald that "she wasn't at all movie-starish; no great closets filled with clothes or anything like that. She had a drive to be a great actress, but it was never as strong as it is with some of these nuts. You could turn it aside." Although the marriage did not survive, it produced five children. Neal and Dahl divorced in 1983.
He then married Felicity "Liccy" Crosland, niece of Francis D'Abreu.
Father:
Harald Dahl
Mother:
Sofie Magdalene Dahl
ex-wife:
Patricia Neal
Wife:
Felicity Ann d'Abreu Crosland
Daughter:
Olivia Twenty
Daughter:
Tessa Dahl
Son:
Theo Matthew
Daughter:
Ophelia Dahl
Daughter:
Lucy Neal Dahl
granddaughter :
Sophie Dahl
granddaughter :
Phoebe Dahl
References
Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl
In Storyteller, the first authorized biography of Dahl, Donald Sturrock granted unprecedented access to the Dahl estate’s archives, draws on personal correspondence, journals and interviews with family members and famous friends to deliver a masterful, witty and incisive look at one of the greatest authors and eccentric characters of the modern age, whose work still delights millions around the world today.
2010
Fantastic Mr. Dahl
Just how did Roald Dahl get into writing? Where did he get his ideas from? What ingredients in his life turned him into the kind of writer he was? Michael Rosen - poet, broadcaster and former Children's Laureate, comes up with some of the answers to these key questions in his lively biography of the world's No.1 storyteller.
2012
Who Was Roald Dahl?
Roald Dahl is one of the most famous children's book authors ever. Now in this Who Was biography, children will learn of his real-life adventures. A flying ace for the British Air Force, he was married to an Academy Award-winning actress. He also wrote books and screenplays for adults.
2012
Roald Dahl: A Biography
A biography of one of the world's most popular authors discusses his youth, his early life as a wartime propagandist, his tormented marriage to actress Patricia Neal.