The incredible life of Roald Dahl

by Karolina Piórkowska

Roald Dahl

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Who was Roald Dahl?

An actor

A politician

A writer

Try again!

• Dahl was born in Llandaff, South Wales, on September 13, 1916. Roald was named after Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian who had been the first man to reach the South Pole just four years earlier.
• Dahl's parents were Norwegian. As a child, he spent his summer vacations visiting with his grandparents in Oslo.
• When Dahl was four years old, his father died.

• Wanting the best for her only son, his mother sent him to boarding schools where many bizarre and memorable events would later be recounted in his autobiography "Boy".
• Pupils at Repton were invited to trial chocolate bars, a memory that stayed with Dahl throughout his life, inspiring Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

• Young Roald was not a very good student, yet his his mother offered to pay for his tuition at Oxford or Cambridge University when he graduated.
• Dahl's response, as quoted from his autobiography, Boy: Tales of Childhood, was, "No thank you. I want to go straight from school to work for a company that will send me to wonderful faraway places like Africa or China."

• And that he did. After Dahl graduated from Repton in 1932, he went on an expedition to Newfoundland.
• Afterward, he took a job with the Shell Oil Company in Tanzania, Africa, where he remained until 1939.

• In 1939, Dahl joined the Royal Air Force. After training in Kenya, he became a World War II fighter pilot. While serving in the Mediterranean, Dahl crash-landed in Egypt.
• The plane crash left him with serious injuries to his skull, spine and hip.

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• Following a recovery that included a hip replacement and two spinal surgeries, Dahl was transferred to Washington, D.C., where he became an assistant air attaché and supplied intelligence to MI6.

• Over his decades-long writing career, Dahl composed 19 children’s books.
• Despite their popularity, Dahl’s children’s books have been the subject of some controversy, as critics and parents have balked at their portrayal of children’s harsh revenge on adult wrongdoers.

• Dahl first established himself as a children’s writer in 1961, when he published the book James and the Giant Peach, a book about a lonely little boy living with his two mean aunts who meets the Old Green Grasshopper and his insect friends on a giant, magical peach. The book met with wide critical and commercial acclaim.

• A quirky, solitary businessman, Willy Wonka, has been holed up alone inside his fantastical chocolate factory until he releases five golden tickets inside the wrappers of candy bars. Winners — including the poor little boy Charlie Bucket, who doesn’t have much to eat — are awarded a visit.

• Three farmers are out to get the cunning trickster Mr. Fox, who outwits them every time. Mr. Fox lives in a tree with his wife and family, which was inspired by a real 150-year beech tree Dahl knew as the “witches tree” standing outside his house.

• Of his many stories, Roald Dahl said The BFG was his favorite. He came up with the idea for a giant who stores dreams in bottles for kids to enjoy when they sleep several years before, and he told the story of the Big Friendly Giant to his own kids at bedtime.

• A boy happens upon a witch convention, where the witches are planning to get rid of every last child in England. The boy and his grandmother must battle the witches to save the children.

• Roald Dahl’s last long story follows the adventures of a genius five-year-old girl, Matilda Wormwood, who uses her powers to help her beloved teacher outwit the cruel headmistress.

• Dahl married film actress Patricia Neal, who won an Academy Award for her role in Hud in 1961. The marriage lasted three decades and resulted in five children, one of whom tragically died in 1962.

• In 1965, Dahl’s first wife Patricia Neal, had a brain haemorrhage, causing a stroke that nearly killed her. She underwent an operation to stop the bleeding, but the left half of her brain was damaged. She was unable to talk, and her right side was paralysed, though gradually things began to improve.

• He feared she would become an “enormous pink cabbage”, so he set up an intensive six-hours-a-day regime. Some professionals warned this was too much, but he ignored them. Pat was coached back to normality “slowly, insidiously and quite relentlessly”. She eventually resumed her acting career, even getting another Oscar nomination.

• This miraculous recovery attracted a lot of attention. Other stroke patients and their families wrote to ask how Dahl had managed it. So Dahl wrote a guide.It was developed into a book, and the methods were taken up widely, inspiring a whole new movement, which led to the formation of The Stroke Association.

• Dahl’s son Theo had developed hydrocephalus after being hit by a taxi. The valve he was fitted with kept blocking and Dahl set about solving the problem with the help of a neurosurgeon – and a toymaker. “We produced this splendid little valve,” Dahl told me. “It was used to treat thousands of children around the world.”

• And then there was his involvement in measles vaccination, an altogether more devastating episode. When Dahl’s daughter Olivia caught the virus aged seven, she developed the most severe form, with inflammation of the brain: encephalitis. She died within days. Dahl was devastated and, for years, would barely talk about it.

• “We thought she was over the worst of it,” he said one evening. “One saw, you know, the usual sort of thing: the fever, the tiredness, the spots. We even teased her for her polka dots.” Dahl had a wan smile and his eyes began to well up. He looked so tired and sad.

After the initial illness, Olivia had appeared to improve before slipping into a coma. There was nothing anyone could do.

• But when the measles vaccine became available some years later, Dahl did all he could to help its uptake. He supported campaigns with a famous measles letter to children which is still used today, and badgered the government to do more.

• Dahl died on November 23, 1990, at the age of 74. He was buried in the parish church of St Peter and St Paul in Great Missenden - the Buckinghamshire village where today The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre continues his extraordinary mission to amaze, thrill and inspire generations of children and their parents.

Fun facts

Dahl wrote many of his stories in a little shed in his garden

Known as his ‘writing hut’, Dahl sat in a battered old armchair and penned famous tales

He never learned how to type

Instead, Dahl preferred to do all his writing in an old red book in pencil.

When Roald Dahl died he was buried with some of his favourite things

Including a power drill, chocolate, snooker cues and of course, his HB pencils.

Dahl invented over 250 new words

There’s even an official Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary to help you tell your snozzcumbers from your snozzberries.

Many of Dahl’s characters were based on people he’d met in real life

The grandmother in The Witches is said to be based on Dahl’s mother, and the little girl in The BFG was named after his granddaughter, Sophie.

In 1971, a real man named Willy Wonka wrote to Roald Dahl

He was a postman from Nebraska.

Roald Dahl was a giant!

Okay, not quite like the ones in his stories, but he was 1,98m tall!

Homework

Write 5 questions you would like to ask Mr Roald Dahl

Sources

https://www.biography.com/writer/roald-dahl

https://www.roalddahl.com/roald-dahl/about

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/12/roald-dahl-medical-pioneer-stroke-hydrocephalus-measles-vaccination

https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/kids-club/entertainment/books/roald-dahl-facts/

Thank you!