Boy (autobiography)

Boy: Tales of Childhood

Author	Roald Dahl
Illustrator	Quentin Blake
Language	English
Genre	Autobiography
Publisher	Jonathan Cape, Great Britain
Publication date	1984
Publication place	United Kingdom

Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984) is the first autobiographical book by British writer Roald Dahl. It describes his life from birth until leaving school, especially focusing on living conditions in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s, the public school system at the time, and how his childhood experiences led him to writing as a career. It ends with his first job, working for Royal Dutch Shell. His autobiography continues in Going Solo.

Key points in the story

• Dahl's ancestry: Dahl's parents were Norwegians who came to Cardiff, Wales in about 1910 after his father and his brother Oscar decided to split hi up and go their separate ways from Paris. His father was more than twenty years older than his mother; he was born in 1863 and she was born in 1885. By the time Roald was born in 1916, his father was 53 years old. His father had lost an arm from complications after fracturing it: according to the book a doctor was summoned, however the doctor was drunk on arrival and mistook the injury for a dislocated shoulder. His attempt to relocate the shoulder caused further damage to the fractured arm, causing it to later be amputated. He had two children from his first wife, who had died shortly after the birth of their second child.
• Roald's family danger: Roald's older sister Astri (his mother's first child) died of appendicitis in 1920 at the age of 7, when Roald was only three years old. His father died of pneumonia two months later at the age of 57. This tragedy came shortly before the birth of his mother's fifth and final child (a girl).
• Nursery: Roald started at nursery when he was four years old, but has very few memories of his time there. The nursery, near his home in Cardiff, was the Elm Tree House primary school that remained active until 2004.
• Sweets! : Roald talks about different confectionery, his love of sweets, and his fascination with the local sweet shop. He also writes of the free samples of Cadbury chocolate bars given to him and his schoolmates for evaluation. Young Dahl dreamed of working as an inventor for Cadbury, an idea he has said later inspired Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
• The Great mouse Plot of 1924: By the age of seven, Roald was attending Llandaff Cathedral School in the Cardiff. He and his friends had a grudge against the local sweet-shop owner, Mrs. Pratchett, a sour elderly widow who gave no thought to hygiene. They played a prank on her by placing a dead mouse in a gobstopper jar while his friend Thwaites distracted her. They were then caned by the school headmaster as a punishment, while Mrs. Pratchett watched on in laughter.
• St Peter's School, Weston-super-Mare: Roald moved to St Peter's School, a boarding school in Weston-super-Mare, at the age of nine. He attended from 1925 to 1929. The most significant event during his time at St Peter's was a caning by the headmaster in which he was given six strokes after he was wrongly accused of cheating during an assignment. Other major events during his time at the school was based on the matron. One time she sprinkled soap shavings into the mouth of a boy who was snoring. She also sent a six-year-old boy who allegedly threw a sponge across the dormitory down to the headmaster in his pyjamas and dressing gown, as a result of which he received six strokes of the cane. A boy in Roald's dormitory sprinkled sugar over the corridor floor and the matron walked through it. Fortunately, for the boy none of his friends gave him in and as a result, the whole school had to go hungry when the headmaster decided to confiscate food parcels coming from the boys' home as punishment for the sprinkled sugar.
• Goat's Tobacco: On one of Roald's visits to his grandparents in Norway, he placed goat droppings in his older sister's fiancé's pipe, thus making him scream and suffer a coughing fit. Later on, one of Roald Dahl's sisters let slip what happened therefore making his sister's lover chase them into the sea.
• Repton: At the age of thirteen, in 1929, Roald moved to Repton School in Derbyshire (a decision based entirely on the fact that the school's name was easier to pronounce than his other choice, Marlborough), where he tells of the fagging duties which he had to perform for "Boazers", as well as the occasion when his friend received ten lashes of the cane from the headmaster as punishment for bad behaviour. The headmaster of the time was, according to Dahl, Geoffrey Francis Fisher; who later became the Archbishop of Canterbury and crowned the Queen in 1953. However, according to Dahl's biographer Jeremy Treglown, the beating took place in May 1933, a year after Fisher had left Repton. The headmaster concerned was in fact J.T. Christie, Fisher's successor.
• A drive in the motorcar: This event happened when Dahl was nine and his sister (twenty one at the time) was driving their first car. She was driving at 35-40 mph when a sudden bend came up. When they crashed Roald flew out the car. When he got up it is said that his nose was hanging on by a small thread of skin. He was taken to the family doctors on Cardiff Cathedral Road.

Editions

• ISBN 0-14-131140-1 (paperback, 2004)
• ISBN 0-14-130305-0 (paperback, 2001)
• ISBN 0-14-015682-8 (paperback, 1992)
• ISBN 0-14-008917-9 (paperback, 1986)
• ISBN 0-435-12300-9 (hardcover, 1986)