Roald Dahl

Patricia Neal and Roald Dahl, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1954

Roald Dahl (September 13, 1916–November 23, 1990) was a British novelist and short story author of Norwegian descent, famous both as a writer of children's fiction as well as adult and horror fiction. Among his most popular books are Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Kiss Kiss.

Biography

Roald Dahl was born in Llandaff, Glamorgan in 1916 to Norwegian parents. He was educated at Repton School. After finishing his schooling, he joined the Shell Oil Company, and was transferred to Tanzania. In World War II, he joined the Royal Air Force. Although severely wounded in Libya, he later saw service in Greece and Syria. He ended the war as a Wing Commander.

He began writing when in 1942 he was transferred to Washington as Assistant Air Attache. His first published short story was A Piece of Cake, describing his accident in Libya (when his aircraft crashed over no-man's-land).

He was married to Hollywood actress Patricia Neal (The Day the Earth Stood Still, Hud) from 1953 to 1983. They had five children.

He died at home in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire and is buried in the St Peter and St Paul Cemetery there. In his honour, the Roald Dahl Children's Museum was opened in nearby Aylesbury.

Writing

Dahl came to write children's stories such as Charlie & the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach; he also wrote macabre adult fiction, usually with a dark sense of humor and a surprise ending. One of his more famous adult stories, The Smoker, was filmed as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. His short story collection Tales of the Unexpected was adapted to a successful eponymous TV series. For a brief period in the 1960s Dahl wrote screenplays to make money. Both of his screenplays—You Only Live Twice and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang—were adaptations of novels by Ian Fleming.

Many of his children's books have illustrations by Quentin Blake.

Books for children

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (a sequel to the above)
• James and the Giant Peach (animated film, 2001)
• Fantastic Mr Fox
• The Witches (made into a film starring Anjelica Huston, 1990)
• Matilda (live-action film, 1996)
• The Magic Finger
• The Wonderful story of Henry Sugar
• Danny the Champion of the World (live-action film, starring Jeremy Irons, 1989)
• The BFG
• Boy (An autobiography until his college days, looking particularly at schooling in Britain in the early part of the 20th century)
• Going Solo (Continuation of his autobiography, in which he goes to work for Shell and spends some time working in Tanzania before joining the War effort and becoming one of the last Allied pilots to withdraw from Greece during the German invasion.)
• The Twits
• George's Marvelous Medicine
• The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me
• Esio Trot

Adult Fiction/Short Stories

• "A Piece of Cake"
• "The Smoker"
• "Pig"
• "The Constable's Coat" or "Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat"
• "The Landlady"
• "Parson's Pleasure"
• "A Dip In The Pool"
• "Royal Jelly"
• "Smell"
• "Lamb to the Slaughter"
• "Neck"
• "The Umbrella Man"
• "The Way Up To Heaven"
• "Vengeance Inc."

Many 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.

Short Story Collections

• Over to You
• Someone Like You
• Kiss Kiss
• Twenty-Nine Kisses from Roald Dahl
• Switch Bitch
• Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life
• Tales of the Unexpected
• More Tales of the Unexpected
• My Uncle Oswald
• The Best of Roald Dahl
• Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories
• The Collected Short Stories of Dahl
• Two Fables
• The Umbrella Man

External link

• A more detailed biography