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Roald Dahl

April 08, 2023

Roald Dahl[a] (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British popular author of children's literature and short stories, a poet, and wartime fighter ace.[1][2] His books have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide.[3][4] Dahl has been called "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century".[5]

Roald Dahl
Dahl in April 1954
Born(1916-09-13)13 September 1916
Cardiff, Wales
Died23 November 1990(1990-11-23) (aged 74)
Oxford, England
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • poet
  • screenwriter
Education
Period1942–1990
GenreFantasy
Spouse
Children
Relatives
Signature
Military career
AllegianceUnited Kingdom
Service/branchRoyal Air Force
Years of service1939–1946
RankSquadron Leader
UnitNo. 80 Squadron RAF
Battles/wars

Dahl was born in Wales to affluent Norwegian immigrant parents, and spent most of his life in England. He served in the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the Second World War. He became a fighter pilot and, subsequently, an intelligence officer, rising to the rank of acting wing commander. He rose to prominence as a writer in the 1940s with works for children and for adults, and he became one of the world's best-selling authors.[6][7] His awards for contribution to literature include the 1983 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the British Book Awards' Children's Author of the Year in 1990. In 2008, The Times placed Dahl 16th on its list of "The 50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945".[8] In 2021, Forbes ranked him the top-earning dead celebrity.[9]

Dahl's short stories are known for their unexpected endings, and his children's books for their unsentimental, macabre, often darkly comic mood, featuring villainous adult enemies of the child characters.[10][11] His children's books champion the kindhearted and feature an underlying warm sentiment.[12][13] His works for children include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG, The Twits, George's Marvellous Medicine and Danny, the Champion of the World. His works for older audiences include the short story collections Tales of the Unexpected and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More.

Early life

Childhood

 
Dahl at age 10 with his sisters Alfhild, Else and Asta. Cardiff, 1927.

Roald Dahl was born in 1916 at Villa Marie, Fairwater Road, in Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales, to Norwegians Harald Dahl (1863–1920) and Sofie Magdalene Dahl (née Hesselberg) (1885–1967).[14][15] Dahl's father, a wealthy shipbroker and self-made man, had emigrated to the UK from Sarpsborg in Norway and settled in Cardiff in the 1880s with his first wife, Frenchwoman Marie Beaurin-Gresser. They had two children together (Ellen Marguerite and Louis) before her death in 1907.[16] Roald Dahl's mother belonged to a well-established Norwegian family of lawyers, priests in the state church and wealthy merchants and estate owners, and emigrated to the UK when she married his father in 1911. Dahl was named after Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen. His first language was Norwegian, which he spoke at home with his parents and his sisters Astri, Alfhild, and Else. The children were raised in Norway's Lutheran state church, the Church of Norway, and were baptised at the Norwegian Church, Cardiff.[17] His maternal grandmother Ellen Wallace was a granddaughter of the member of parliament Georg Wallace and a descendant of an early 18th-century Scottish immigrant to Norway.[18]

 
Mrs Pratchett's former sweet shop in Llandaff, Cardiff, has a blue plaque dedicated to Dahl. His autobiography Boy recalls the prank he and his friends played on her in a jar of gobstoppers.[19]

Dahl's sister Astri died from appendicitis at age seven in 1920 when Dahl was three years old, and his father died of pneumonia at age 57 several weeks later.[20] Later that year, his youngest sister, Asta, was born.[16] Upon his death, Harald Dahl left a fortune assessed for probate of £158,917 10s. 0d. (equivalent to £6,791,035 in 2021).[21][22][23] Dahl's mother decided to remain in Wales instead of returning to Norway to live with relatives, as her husband had wanted their children to be educated in English schools, which he considered the world's best.[24] When he was six years old, Dahl met his idol Beatrix Potter, author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit featuring the mischievous Peter Rabbit, the first licensed fictional character.[25][26] In 2020 their meeting would be dramatised in the television drama film, Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse.[27][28]

Dahl first attended The Cathedral School, Llandaff. At age eight, he and four of his friends were caned by the headmaster after putting a dead mouse in a jar of gobstoppers at the local sweet shop,[5] which was owned by a "mean and loathsome" old woman named Mrs Pratchett.[5] The five boys named their prank the "Great Mouse Plot of 1924".[29] Mrs Pratchett inspired Dahl's creation of the cruel headmistress Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, and a prank, this time in a water jug belonging to Trunchbull, would also appear in the book.[30][31] Gobstoppers were a favourite sweet among British schoolboys between the two World Wars, and Dahl referred to them in his fictional Everlasting Gobstopper which was featured in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.[32]

Dahl transferred to St Peter's boarding school in Weston-super-Mare. His parents had wanted him to be educated at an English public school, and this proved to be the nearest because of the regular ferry link across the Bristol Channel. Dahl's time at St Peter's was unpleasant; he was very homesick and wrote to his mother every week but never revealed his unhappiness to her. After her death in 1967, he learned that she had saved every one of his letters;[33] they were broadcast in abridged form as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week in 2016 to mark the centenary of his birth.[34] Dahl wrote about his time at St Peter's in his autobiography Boy: Tales of Childhood.[35]

Repton School

 
Dahl attended Repton School in Derbyshire from 1929 to 1934

From 1929, when he was 13, Dahl attended Repton School in Derbyshire. Dahl disliked the hazing and described an environment of ritual cruelty and status domination, with younger boys having to act as personal servants for older boys, frequently subject to terrible beatings. His biographer Donald Sturrock described these violent experiences in Dahl's early life.[36] Dahl expresses some of these darker experiences in his writings, which is also marked by his hatred of cruelty and corporal punishment.[37]

According to Dahl's autobiography, Boy: Tales of Childhood, a friend named Michael was viciously caned by headmaster Geoffrey Fisher. Writing in that same book, Dahl reflected: "All through my school life I was appalled by the fact that masters and senior boys were allowed literally to wound other boys, and sometimes quite severely... I couldn’t get over it. I never have got over it."[38] Fisher was later appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, and he crowned Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. However, according to Dahl's biographer Jeremy Treglown,[39] the caning took place in May 1933, a year after Fisher had left Repton; the headmaster was in fact J. T. Christie, Fisher's successor as headmaster. Dahl said the incident caused him to "have doubts about religion and even about God".[40]

He was never seen as a particularly talented writer in his school years, with one of his English teachers writing in his school report "I have never met anybody who so persistently writes words meaning the exact opposite of what is intended."[41] Dahl was exceptionally tall, reaching 6 feet 6 inches (1.98 m) in adult life.[42] He played sports including cricket, football and golf, and was made captain of the squash team.[43] As well as having a passion for literature, he developed an interest in photography and often carried a camera with him.[20]

During his years at Repton, the Cadbury chocolate company occasionally sent boxes of new chocolates to the school to be tested by the pupils.[44] Dahl dreamt of inventing a new chocolate bar that would win the praise of Mr Cadbury himself; this inspired him in writing his third children's book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), and to refer to chocolate in other children's books.[45]

Throughout his childhood and adolescent years, Dahl spent the majority of his summer holidays with his mother's family in Norway. He wrote about many happy memories from those visits in Boy: Tales of Childhood, such as when he replaced the tobacco in his half-sister's fiancé's pipe with goat droppings.[46] He noted only one unhappy memory of his holidays in Norway: at around the age of eight, he had to have his adenoids removed by a doctor.[47] His childhood and first job selling kerosene in Midsomer Norton and surrounding villages in Somerset are subjects in Boy: Tales of Childhood.[48]

After school

After finishing his schooling, in August 1934 Dahl crossed the Atlantic on the RMS Nova Scotia and hiked through Newfoundland with the Public Schools Exploring Society.[49][50]

In July 1934, Dahl joined the Shell Petroleum Company. Following two years of training in the United Kingdom, he was assigned first to Mombasa, Kenya, then to Dar es Salaam in the British colony of Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania).[51] Dahl explains in his autobiography "Going Solo" that only three young Englishmen ran the Shell company in the territory, of which he was the youngest and junior.[52] 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 out on assignments supplying oil to customers across Tanganyika, he encountered black mamba snakes and lions, among other wildlife.[51]

Fighter pilot

 
Dahl's leather flying helmet on display in the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in Great Missenden

In August 1939, as the Second World War loomed, the British made plans to round up the hundreds of Germans living in Dar-es-Salaam. Dahl was commissioned as a lieutenant into the King's African Rifles, commanding a platoon of Askari men, indigenous troops who were serving in the colonial army.[53]

In November 1939, Dahl joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) as an aircraftman with service number 774022.[54] After a 600-mile (970 km) car journey from Dar es Salaam to Nairobi, he was accepted for flight training with sixteen other men, of whom only three survived the war. With seven hours and 40 minutes experience in a De Havilland Tiger Moth, he flew solo;[55] Dahl enjoyed watching the wildlife of Kenya during his flights. He continued to advanced flying training in Iraq, at RAF Habbaniya, 50 miles (80 km) west of Baghdad. Following six months' training on Hawker Harts, Dahl was commissioned as a pilot officer on 24 August 1940, and was judged ready to join a squadron and face the enemy.[54][56]

 
Dahl was flying a Gloster Gladiator when he crash landed in Libya

He was assigned to No. 80 Squadron RAF, flying obsolete Gloster Gladiators, the last biplane fighter aircraft used by the RAF. Dahl was surprised to find that he would not receive any specialised training in aerial combat or in flying Gladiators. On 19 September 1940, Dahl was ordered to fly his Gladiator by stages from Abu Sueir (near Ismailia, in Egypt) to 80 Squadron's forward airstrip 30 miles (48 km) 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.[57] The undercarriage hit a boulder and the aircraft crashed. Dahl's skull was fractured and his nose was smashed; he was temporarily blinded.[58] He managed to drag himself away from the blazing wreckage and lost consciousness. He wrote about the crash in his first published work.[58]

Dahl was rescued and taken to a first-aid post in Mersa Matruh, where he regained consciousness, but not his sight. He was transported by train to the Royal Navy hospital in Alexandria. There he fell in and out of love with a nurse, Mary Welland. A RAF inquiry into the crash revealed that the location to which he had been told to fly was completely wrong, and he had mistakenly been sent instead to the no man's land between the Allied and Italian forces.[59]

 
A Hawker Hurricane Mk 1, the aircraft type in which Dahl engaged in aerial combat over Greece.

In February 1941, Dahl was discharged from the hospital and deemed 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' experience flying Hurricanes. By this stage in the Greek campaign, the RAF had only 18 combat aircraft in Greece: 14 Hurricanes and four Bristol Blenheim light bombers. Dahl flew in his first aerial combat on 15 April 1941, while flying alone over the city of Chalcis. He attacked six Junkers Ju 88s that were bombing ships and shot one down. On 16 April in another air battle, he shot down another Ju 88.[60]

On 20 April 1941, 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. Of 12 Hurricanes involved, five were shot down and four of their pilots killed, including Pattle. Greek observers on the ground counted 22 German aircraft downed, but because of the confusion of the aerial engagement, none of the pilots knew which aircraft they had shot down. Dahl described it as "an endless blur of enemy fighters whizzing towards me from every side".[61]

In May, as the Germans were pressing on Athens, Dahl was evacuated to Egypt. His squadron was reassembled in Haifa. From there, Dahl flew sorties every day for a period of four weeks, shooting down a Vichy French Air Force Potez 63 on 8 June and another Ju 88 on 15 June. In a memoir, Dahl recounts in detail an attack by him and his fellow Hurricane pilots on the Vichy-held Rayak airfield. He says that as he and his fellow Hurricane pilots swept in:

. . . low over the field at midday we saw to our astonishment a bunch of girls in brightly coloured cotton dresses standing out by the planes with glasses in their hands having drinks with the French pilots, and I remember seeing bottles of wine standing on the wing of one of the planes as we went swooshing over. It was a Sunday morning and the Frenchmen were evidently entertaining their girlfriends and showing off their aircraft to them, which was a very French thing to do in the middle of a war at a front-line aerodrome. Every one of us held our fire on that first pass over the flying field and it was wonderfully comical to see the girls all dropping their wine glasses and galloping in their high heels for the door of the nearest building. We went round again, but this time we were no longer a surprise and they were ready for us with their ground defences, and I am afraid that our chivalry resulted in damage to several of our Hurricanes, including my own. But we destroyed five of their planes on the ground.[62]

Despite this somewhat light-hearted account, Dahl also noted that, ultimately, Vichy forces killed four of the nine Hurricane pilots in his squadron. Describing the Vichy forces as "disgusting," he stated that "...thousands of lives were lost, and I for one have never forgiven the Vichy French for the unnecessary slaughter they caused."[63]

When he began to get severe headaches that caused him to black out, he was invalided home to Britain where he stayed with his mother in Buckinghamshire.[64] Though at this time Dahl was only a pilot officer on probation, in September 1941 he was simultaneously confirmed as a pilot officer and promoted to war substantive flying officer.[65]

Diplomat, writer and intelligence officer

After being invalided home, Dahl was posted to an RAF training camp in Uxbridge. He attempted to recover his health enough to become an instructor.[66] In late March 1942, while in London, he met the Under-Secretary of State for Air, Major Harold Balfour, at his club. Impressed by Dahl's war record and conversational abilities, Balfour appointed the young man as assistant air attaché at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. Initially resistant, Dahl was finally persuaded by Balfour to accept, and took passage on the MS Batory from Glasgow a few days later. He arrived in Halifax, Canada, on 14 April, after which he took a sleeper train to Montreal.[67]

Coming from war-starved Britain (in what was a wartime period of rationing in the United Kingdom), Dahl was amazed by the wealth of food and amenities to be had in North America.[68] Arriving in Washington a week later, Dahl found he liked the atmosphere of the US capital. He shared a house with another attaché at 1610 34th Street, NW, in Georgetown. But after ten days in his new posting, Dahl strongly disliked it, feeling he had taken on "a most ungodly unimportant job".[69] He later explained, "I'd just come from the war. People were getting killed. I had been flying around, seeing horrible things. Now, almost instantly, I found myself in the middle of a pre-war cocktail party in America."[70]

Dahl was unimpressed by his office in the British Air Mission, attached to the embassy. He was also unimpressed by the ambassador, Lord Halifax, with whom he sometimes played tennis and whom he described as "a courtly English gentleman". Dahl socialised with Charles E. Marsh, a Texas publisher and oilman, at his house at 2136 R Street, NW, and the Marsh country estate in Virginia.[71][72] 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; the United States had entered the war only the previous December, following the attack on Pearl Harbor.[56]

At this time Dahl met the noted British novelist C. S. Forester, who was also working to aid the British war effort. Forester worked for the British Ministry of Information and was writing propaganda for the Allied cause, mainly for American consumption.[73] The Saturday Evening Post had asked Forester to write a story based on Dahl's flying experiences; Forester asked Dahl to write down some RAF anecdotes so that he could shape them into a story. After Forester read what Dahl had given him, he decided to publish the story exactly as Dahl had written it.[74] He originally titled the article as "A Piece of Cake" but the magazine changed it to "Shot Down Over Libya" to make it sound more dramatic, although Dahl had not been shot down; it was published on 1 August 1942 issue of the Post. Dahl was promoted to flight lieutenant (war-substantive) in August 1942.[75] Later he worked with such other well-known British officers as Ian Fleming (who later published the popular James Bond series) and David Ogilvy, promoting Britain's interests and message in the US and combating the "America First" movement.[56]

This work introduced Dahl to espionage and the activities of the Canadian spymaster William Stephenson, known by the codename "Intrepid".[76] During the war, Dahl supplied intelligence from Washington to Prime Minister Winston Churchill. As Dahl later said: "My job was to try to help Winston to get on with FDR, and tell Winston what was in the old boy's mind."[74] Dahl also supplied intelligence to Stephenson and his organisation, known as British Security Coordination, which was part of MI6.[72] Dahl was once sent back to Britain by British Embassy officials, supposedly for misconduct—"I got booted out by the big boys," he said. Stephenson promptly sent him back to Washington—with a promotion to wing commander rank.[77] Toward the end of the war, Dahl wrote some of the history of the secret organisation; he and Stephenson remained friends for decades after the war.[78]

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.[79] His record of five aerial victories, qualifying him as a flying ace, has been confirmed by post-war research and cross-referenced in Axis records. It is most likely that he scored more than those victories during 20 April 1941, when 22 German aircraft were shot down.[80]

Post-war life

 
Patricia Neal and Roald Dahl

Dahl married American actress Patricia Neal on 2 July 1953 at Trinity Church in New York City. Their marriage lasted for 30 years and they had five children:

On 5 December 1960, four-month-old Theo Dahl was severely injured when his baby carriage was struck by a taxicab 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 improve the shunt used to alleviate the condition.[83][84] The valve was a collaboration between Dahl, hydraulic engineer Stanley Wade, and London's Great Ormond Street Hospital neurosurgeon Kenneth Till, and was used successfully on almost 3,000 children around the world.[85]

In November 1962, Dahl's daughter Olivia died of measles encephalitis, age seven. Her death left Dahl "limp with despair", and feeling guilty about not having been able to do anything for her.[85] Dahl subsequently became a proponent of immunisation—writing "Measles: A Dangerous Illness" in 1988 in response to measles cases in the UK—and dedicated his 1982 book The BFG to his daughter.[86][87] After Olivia's death and a meeting with a Church official, Dahl came to view Christianity as a sham.[88] In mourning he had sought spiritual guidance from Geoffrey Fisher, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and was dismayed being told that, although Olivia was in Paradise, her beloved dog Rowley would never join her there.[88] Dahl recalled years later:

"I wanted to ask him how he could be so absolutely sure that other creatures did not get the same special treatment as us. I sat there wondering if this great and famous churchman really knew what he was talking about and whether he knew anything at all about God or heaven, and if he didn't, then who in the world did?"[88]

In 1965, Dahl's wife Patricia Neal suffered three burst cerebral aneurysms while pregnant with their fifth child, Lucy. Dahl took control of her rehabilitation over the next months; Neal had to re-learn to talk and walk, but she managed to return to her acting career.[89] This period of their lives was dramatised in the film The Patricia Neal Story (1981), in which the couple were played by Glenda Jackson and Dirk Bogarde.[90]

 
Dahl (age 72) signing books in Amsterdam, Netherlands (October 1988).

In 1972, Roald Dahl met Felicity d'Abreu Crosland, niece of Lt.-Col. Francis D'Abreu who was married to Margaret Bowes Lyon, the first cousin of the Queen Mother, while Felicity was working as a set designer on an advert for Maxim coffee with the author's then wife, Patricia Neal.[91] Soon after the pair were introduced, they began an 11-year affair.[91] In 1983 Neal and Dahl divorced and Dahl married Felicity,[92][93] at Brixton Town Hall, South London. Felicity (known as Liccy) gave up her job and moved into Gipsy House, Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire, which had been Dahl's home since 1954.[94]

In the 1986 New Years Honours List, Dahl was offered an appointment to Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), but turned it down. He reportedly wanted a knighthood so that his wife would be Lady Dahl.[95][96]

In 2012, Dahl was featured in the list of The New Elizabethans to mark the diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. A panel of seven academics, journalists and historians named Dahl among the group of people in the UK "whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands and given the age its character".[97]

In September 2016, Dahl's daughter Lucy received the BBC's Blue Peter Gold badge in his honour, the first time it had ever been awarded posthumously.[98]

Writing

 
Roald Dahl's story "The Devious Bachelor" was illustrated by Frederick Siebel when it was published in Collier's (September 1953).

Dahl's first published work, inspired by a meeting with C. S. Forester, was "A Piece of Cake", on 1 August 1942. The story, about his wartime adventures, was bought by The Saturday Evening Post for US$1,000 (equivalent to $17,000 in 2021) and published under the title "Shot Down Over Libya".[99]

His first children's book was The Gremlins, published in 1943, about mischievous little creatures that were part of Royal Air Force folklore.[100] The RAF pilots blamed the gremlins for all the problems with the aircraft.[101] The protagonist Gus—an RAF pilot, like Dahl—joins forces with the gremlins against a common enemy, Hitler and the Nazis.[102] While at the British Embassy in Washington, Dahl sent a copy to the First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who read it to her grandchildren,[100] and the book was commissioned by Walt Disney for a film that was never made.[103] Dahl went on to write some of the best-loved children's stories of the 20th century, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG, The Twits and George's Marvellous Medicine.[5]

Dahl also had a successful parallel career as the writer of macabre adult short stories, which often blended humour and innocence with surprising plot twists.[104] The Mystery Writers of America presented Dahl with three Edgar Awards for his work, and many were originally written for American magazines such as Collier's ("The Collector's Item" was Collier's Star Story of the week for 4 September 1948), Ladies Home Journal, Harper's, Playboy and The New Yorker.[105] Works such as Kiss Kiss subsequently collected Dahl's stories into anthologies, and gained significant popularity. Dahl wrote more than 60 short stories; they have appeared in numerous collections, some only being published in book form after his death. His three Edgar Awards were given for: in 1954, the collection Someone Like You; in 1959, the story "The Landlady"; and in 1980, the episode of Tales of the Unexpected based on "Skin".[104]

 
Roald Dahl's vardo in the garden of his house, Gipsy House, in Great Missenden, where he wrote Danny, the Champion of the World in 1975.

One of his more famous adult stories, "The Smoker", also known as "Man from the South", was filmed twice as both 1960 and 1985 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, filmed as a 1979 episode of Tales of the Unexpected, and also adapted into Quentin Tarantino's segment of the film Four Rooms (1995).[106] This oft-anthologised classic concerns a man in Jamaica who wagers with visitors in an attempt to claim the fingers from their hands. The original 1960 version in the Hitchcock series stars Steve McQueen and Peter Lorre.[106] Five additional Dahl stories were used in the Hitchcock series. Dahl was credited with teleplay for two episodes, and four of his episodes were directed by Alfred Hitchcock himself, an example of which was "Lamb to the Slaughter" (1958).[107]

Dahl acquired a traditional Romanichal vardo in the 1960s, and the family used it as a playhouse for his children at home in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire. He later used the vardo as a writing room, where he wrote Danny, the Champion of the World in 1975.[108] Dahl incorporated a Gypsy wagon into the main plot of the book, where the young English boy, Danny, and his father, William (played by Jeremy Irons in the film adaptation) live in a vardo.[109] Many other scenes and characters from Great Missenden are reflected in his work. For example, the village library was the inspiration for Mrs Phelps' library in Matilda, where the title character devours classic literature by the age of four.[110]

His short story collection Tales of the Unexpected was adapted to a successful TV series of the same name, beginning with "Man from the South".[111] When the stock of Dahl's own original stories was exhausted, the series continued by adapting stories written in Dahl's style by other authors, including John Collier and Stanley Ellin.[112] Another collection of short stories, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, was published in 1977, and the eponymous short story will be adapted into a film in 2023 by director Wes Anderson with Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular character Henry Sugar.[113]

Some of Dahl's 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.[114] In his novel My Uncle Oswald, the uncle engages a temptress to seduce 20th century geniuses and royalty with a love potion secretly added to chocolate truffles made by Dahl's favourite chocolate shop, Prestat of Piccadilly, London.[114] 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.[115][116]

The last book published in his lifetime, Esio Trot, released in January 1990, marked a change in style for the author. Unlike other Dahl works (which often feature tyrannical adults and heroic/magical children), it is the story of an old, lonely man trying to make a connection with a woman he has loved from afar.[117] In 1994, the English language audiobook recording of the book was provided by Monty Python member Michael Palin.[118] Screenwriter Richard Curtis adapted it into a 2015 BBC television comedy film, Roald Dahl's Esio Trot, featuring Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench as the couple.[119]

Children's fiction

"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."

—Illustrator Quentin Blake on the lasting appeal of Dahl's children's books.[5]

Dahl's children's works are usually told from the point of view of a child. They typically involve adult villains who hate and mistreat children, and feature at least one "good" adult to counteract the villain(s).[5] These stock characters are possibly a reference to the abuse that Dahl stated that he experienced in the boarding schools he attended.[5] Dahl's books see the triumph of the child; children's book critic Amanda Craig said, "He was unequivocal that it is the good, young and kind who triumph over the old, greedy and the wicked."[13] Anna Leskiewicz in The Telegraph wrote "It's often suggested that Dahl's lasting appeal is a result of his exceptional talent for wriggling his way into children’s fantasies and fears, and laying them out on the page with anarchic delight. Adult villains are drawn in terrifying detail, before they are exposed as liars and hypocrites, and brought tumbling down with retributive justice, either by a sudden magic or the superior acuity of the children they mistreat."[117]

While his whimsical fantasy stories feature an underlying warm sentiment, they are often juxtaposed with grotesque, darkly comic and sometimes harshly violent scenarios.[10][12] The Witches, George's Marvellous Medicine and Matilda are examples of this formula. The BFG follows, 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 also surface in works such as Fantastic Mr Fox and Danny, the Champion of the World where the unpleasant wealthy neighbours are outwitted.[74][120]

Dahl also features characters who 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 features in James and the Giant Peach and the nasty farmer Boggis in Fantastic Mr Fox is an enormously fat character. 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, disregarding the adults who tell him not to, and falls in, getting sucked up a pipe and nearly being turned into fudge. In Matilda, Bruce Bogtrotter steals cake from the evil headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, and is forced to eat a gigantic chocolate cake in front of the school; when he unexpectedly succeeds at this, Trunchbull smashes the empty plate over his head. In The Witches, Bruno Jenkins is lured by the witches (whose leader is the Grand High Witch) into their convention with the promise of chocolate, before they turn him into a mouse.[121] Aunt Sponge is flattened by a giant peach. When Dahl was a boy his 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, the fox family in Fantastic Mr Fox and the trolls in The Minpins.[122]

Receiving the 1983 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, Dahl encouraged his children and his readers to let their imagination run free. His daughter Lucy stated "his spirit was so large and so big he taught us to believe in magic."[74] She said her father later told her that if they had simply said goodnight after a bedtime story, he assumed it wasn't a good idea. But if they begged him to continue, he knew he was on to something, and the story would sometimes turn into a book.[123]

Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.

— Roald Dahl, The Minpins

Dahl was also famous for his inventive, playful use of language, which was a key element to his writing. He invented new words by scribbling down his words before swapping letters around and adopting spoonerisms and malapropisms.[124] The lexicographer Susan Rennie stated that Dahl built his new words on familiar sounds, adding:

He didn't always explain what his words meant, but children can work them out because they often sound like a word they know, and he loved using onomatopoeia. For example, you know that something lickswishy and delumptious is good to eat, whereas something uckyslush or rotsome is definitely not! He also used sounds that children love to say, like squishous and squizzle, or fizzlecrump and fizzwiggler.[124]

A UK television special titled Roald Dahl's Revolting Rule Book which was hosted by Richard E. Grant and aired on 22 September 2007, commemorated Dahl's 90th birthday and also celebrated his impact as a children's author in popular culture.[125] It also featured eight main rules he applied on all his children's books:

  1. Just add chocolate
  2. Adults can be scary
  3. Bad things happen
  4. Revenge is sweet
  5. Keep a wicked sense of humour
  6. Pick perfect pictures
  7. Films are fun...but books are better!
  8. Food is fun!

In 2016, marking the centenary of Dahl's birth, Rennie compiled The Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary which includes many of his invented words and their meaning.[124] Rennie commented that some of Dahl's words have already escaped his world, for example, Scrumdiddlyumptious: "Food that is utterly delicious".[124] In his poetry, Dahl gives a humorous re-interpretation of well-known nursery rhymes and fairy tales, parodying the narratives and providing surprise endings in place of the traditional happily-ever-after. Dahl's collection of poems Revolting Rhymes is recorded in audiobook form, and narrated by actor Alan Cumming.[126]

Screenplays

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.[127][128] 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 (1971). Dahl later disowned the film, saying he was "disappointed" because "he thought it placed too much emphasis on Willy Wonka and not enough on Charlie".[129] He was also "infuriated" by the deviations in the plot devised by David Seltzer in his draft of the screenplay. This resulted in his refusal for any more versions of the book to be made in his lifetime, as well as an adaptation for the sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.[130]

Influences

 
Interior of Dylan Thomas's writing shed. Dahl made a replica of it in his own garden in Great Missenden where he wrote many of his stories

A major part of Dahl's literary influences stemmed from his childhood. In his younger days, he was an avid reader, especially awed by fantastic tales of heroism and triumph. He met his idol, Beatrix Potter, when he was six years old.[28] His other favourite authors included Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray and Frederick Marryat, and their works made a lasting mark on his life and writing.[131] Joe Sommerlad in The Independent writes, "Dahl’s novels are often dark affairs, filled with cruelty, bereavement and Dickensian adults prone to gluttony and sadism. The author clearly felt compelled to warn his young readers about the evils of the world, taking the lesson from earlier fairy tales that they could stand hard truths and would be the stronger for hearing them."[132]

Dahl was also influenced by Lewis Carroll’s Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The "Drink Me" episode in Alice inspired a scene in Dahl's George's Marvellous Medicine where a tyrannical grandmother drinks a potion and is blown up to the size of a farmhouse.[132] Finding too many distractions in his house, Dahl remembered the poet Dylan Thomas had found a peaceful shed to write in close to home. Dahl travelled to visit Thomas's hut in Carmarthenshire, Wales in the 1950s and, after taking a look inside, decided to make a replica of it to write in.[133]

Dahl liked ghost stories, and claimed that Trolls by Jonas Lie was one of the finest ghost stories ever written. While he was still a youngster, his mother, Sofie Dahl, related traditional Norwegian myths and legends from her native homeland to Dahl and his sisters. Dahl always maintained that his mother and her stories had a strong influence on his writing. In one interview, he mentioned: "She was a great teller of tales. Her memory was prodigious and nothing that ever happened to her in her life was forgotten."[134] When Dahl started writing and publishing his famous books for children, he included a grandmother character in The Witches, and later said that she was based directly on his own mother as a tribute.[135][136]

Television

In 1961, Dahl hosted and wrote for a science fiction and horror television anthology series called Way Out, which preceded the Twilight Zone series on the CBS network for 14 episodes from March to July.[137] One of the last dramatic network shows shot in New York City, the entire series is available for viewing at The Paley Center for Media in New York City and Los Angeles.[138] He also wrote for the satirical BBC comedy programme That Was the Week That Was, which was hosted by David Frost.[139]

The British television series, Tales of the Unexpected, originally aired on ITV between 1979 and 1988.[140] The series was released to tie in with Dahl's short story anthology of the same name, which had introduced readers to many motifs that were common in his writing.[111] The series was an anthology of different tales, initially based on Dahl's short stories.[111] The stories were sometimes sinister, sometimes wryly comedic and usually had a twist ending. Dahl introduced on camera all the episodes of the first two series, which bore the full title Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected.[141]

Death and legacy

 
Dahl's gravestone, Church of St Peter and St Paul, Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire

Roald Dahl died on 23 November 1990, at the age of 74 of a rare cancer of the blood, myelodysplastic syndrome, in Oxford,[142] and was buried in the cemetery at the Church of St Peter and St Paul, Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, England. 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. Today, children continue to leave toys and flowers by his grave.[143]

In November 1996, the Roald Dahl Children's Gallery was opened at the Buckinghamshire County Museum in nearby Aylesbury.[144] The main-belt asteroid 6223 Dahl, discovered by Czech astronomer Antonín Mrkos, was named in his memory in 1996.[145][146]

Roald Dahl Plass
 
Roald Dahl Plass illuminated at night
 
Plaque commemorating Roald Dahl

In 2002, one of Cardiff Bay's modern landmarks, the Oval Basin plaza, was renamed Roald Dahl Plass. Plass is Norwegian for "place" or "square", alluding to the writer's Norwegian roots. There have also been calls from the public for a permanent statue of him to be erected in Cardiff.[147] In 2016, the city celebrated the centenary of Dahl's birth in Llandaff. Welsh Arts organisations, including National Theatre Wales, Wales Millennium Centre and Literature Wales, came together for a series of events, titled Roald Dahl 100, including a Cardiff-wide City of the Unexpected, which marked his legacy.[6]

Dahl's charitable commitments in the fields of neurology, haematology and literacy during his life have been continued by his widow since his death, through Roald Dahl's Marvellous Children's Charity, formerly known as the Roald Dahl Foundation.[115] The charity provides care and support to seriously ill children and young people throughout the UK.[148] In June 2005, the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in the author's home village Great Missenden was officially opened by Cherie Blair, wife of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, to celebrate the work of Roald Dahl and advance his work in literacy education.[149] Over 50,000 visitors from abroad, mainly from Australia, Japan, the United States and Germany, travel to the village museum every year.[150]

 
Matilda the Musical has been shown in the West End (pictured) since November 2011, and on Broadway between 2013 and 2017

In 2008, the UK charity Booktrust and Children's Laureate Michael Rosen inaugurated The Roald Dahl Funny Prize, an annual award to authors of humorous children's fiction.[151][152] On 14 September 2009 (the day after what would have been Dahl's 93rd birthday) the first blue plaque in his honour was unveiled in Llandaff.[153] Rather than commemorating his place of birth, however, the plaque was erected on the wall of the former sweet shop (and site of "The Great Mouse Plot of 1924") that features in the first part of his autobiography Boy. It was unveiled by his widow Felicity and son Theo.[153] In 2018, Weston-super-Mare, the town described by Dahl as a "seedy seaside resort", unveiled a blue plaque dedicated to him, on the site of the since-demolished boarding school Dahl attended, St Peter's.[154] The anniversary of Dahl's birthday on 13 September is celebrated as "Roald Dahl Day" in Africa, the United Kingdom and Latin America.[155][156][157]

In honour of Dahl, the Royal Gibraltar Post Office issued a set of four stamps in 2010 featuring Quentin Blake's original illustrations for four of the children's books written by Dahl during his long career; The BFG, The Twits, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Matilda.[158] A set of six commemorative Royal Mail stamps was issued in 2012, featuring Blake's illustrations for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, The Twits, Matilda, Fantastic Mr Fox, and James and the Giant Peach.[159] Dahl's influence has extended beyond literary figures. For instance film director Tim Burton recalled from childhood "the second layer [after Dr. Seuss] of connecting to a writer who gets the idea of the modern fable—and the mixture of light and darkness, and not speaking down to kids, and the kind of politically incorrect humour that kids get. I've always like that, and it's shaped everything I've felt that I've done."[160] Steven Spielberg read The BFG to his children when they were young, stating the book celebrates the fact that it's OK to be different as well as to have an active imagination: "It's very important that we preserve the tradition of allowing young children to run free with their imaginations and magic and imagination are the same thing."[161] Actress Scarlett Johansson named Fantastic Mr Fox one of the five books that made a difference to her.[162]

Dahl has an incredibly distinctive style: his subversive, unpredictable plots, musical prose and caustic wit are impossible to imitate. And yet his stories have proved astonishingly malleable. Often adapted by equally idiosyncratic writers and directors, when translated onto stage and screen, his works seamlessly take on the impression of their new maker. Like in many of his stories, Dahl offers a narrative where troublemaking is rewarded, and games and tricks are more successful than following rules. Perhaps this, more than anything, is the reason why Dahl’s stories excite the imagination of so many adults and children, and why so many storytellers across stage and screen can’t resist remaking his tales in their own individual style. Right across his body of work, playfulness and inventiveness are always prized over boring qualities like obedience and deference. In Dahl's world, creative disruption is presented in such an appealing, delicious light, that you can't help but join in the fun.

— Anna Leskiewicz in The Telegraph, “Why we love the mischievous spirit of Roald Dahl”.[117]
 
James and the Giant Peach musical playing at the Young People's Theatre in Toronto, 2014

Regarded as "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century",[5] Dahl was named by The Times one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.[8] He ranks amongst the world's best-selling fiction authors with sales estimated at over 300 million,[3][4][7][10] and his books have been published in 63 languages.[6][163] In 2000 Dahl topped the list of Britain's favourite authors.[164] In 2003 four books by Dahl, led by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at number 35, ranked among the Top 100 in The Big Read, a survey of the British public by the BBC to determine the "nation's best-loved novel" of all time.[165] In surveys of UK teachers, parents and students, Dahl is frequently ranked the best children's writer.[166][167] In a 2006 list for the Royal Society of Literature, Harry Potter creator J. K. Rowling named Charlie and the Chocolate Factory one of her top ten books every child should read.[168] Critics have commented on the similarities between the Dursley family from Harry Potter and the nightmarish guardians seen in many of Dahl's books, such as Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker from James and the Giant Peach, Grandma from George's Marvellous Medicine, and the Wormwoods from Matilda.[169] In 2012, Matilda was ranked number 30 among all-time best children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a monthly with primarily US audience. The Top 100 included four books by Dahl, more than any other writer.[170] The American magazine Time named three Dahl books in its list of the 100 Best Young-Adult Books of All Time, more than any other author.[171] Dahl is one of the most borrowed authors in UK libraries.[172][173]

"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.[174]

In 2012, Dahl was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork—the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover—to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life he most admires.[175][176] In 2016 Dahl's enduring popularity was proved by his ranking in Amazon's the top five best-selling children's authors on the online store over the last year, looking at sales in print and on the Kindle store.[177] In a 2017 UK poll of the greatest authors, songwriters, artists and photographers, Dahl was named the greatest storyteller of all time, ranking ahead of Dickens, Shakespeare, Rowling and Spielberg.[178] In 2017, the airline Norwegian announced Dahl's image would appear on the tail fin one of their Boeing 737-800 aircraft. He is one of the company's six "British tail fin heroes", joining Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, England World Cup winner Bobby Moore, novelist Jane Austen, pioneering pilot Amy Johnson and aviation entrepreneur Freddie Laker.[179][180]

In September 2021, Netflix acquired the Roald Dahl Story Company in a deal worth more than £500 million ($686 million).[181] A film adaptation of Matilda the Musical was released by Netflix and Sony Pictures Releasing in December 2022, and the cast includes Emma Thompson as Miss Trunchbull.[182]

Criticism and controversy

Anti-Semitic and Anti-Israel Comments

Dahl reviewed Australian author Tony Clifton's God Cried, a picture book about the siege of West Beirut by the Israeli army during the 1982 Lebanon War.[183] The article appeared in the August 1983 issue of the Literary Review and was the subject of much media comment and criticism at the time.[184][185][186] According to Dahl, until this point in time "a race of people", meaning Jews, had never "switched so rapidly from victims to barbarous murderers." The empathy of all after the Holocaust had turned "into hatred and revulsion."[185] Dahl wrote that Clifton's book would make readers "violently anti-Israeli", with Dahl stating: "I am not anti-Semitic. I am anti-Israel."[187] He asked: "must Israel, like Germany, be brought to her knees before she learns how to behave in this world?"[188] The United States, he said, was "so utterly dominated by the great Jewish financial institutions" that "they dare not defy" Israelis.[185]

Following the Literary Review article, Dahl told a journalist from the New Statesman: "There's a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it's a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. I mean there is always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason."[189][190] In 1990, during an interview with The Independent, Dahl explained that his issue with Israel began when they invaded Lebanon in 1982: "they killed 22,000 civilians when they bombed Beirut. It was very much hushed up in the newspapers because they are primarily Jewish-owned. I'm certainly anti-Israeli and I've become antisemitic in as much as that you get a Jewish person in another country like England strongly supporting Zionism. I think they should see both sides. It's the same old thing: we all know about Jews and the rest of it. There aren't any non-Jewish publishers anywhere, they control the media—jolly clever thing to do—that's why the president of the United States has to sell all this stuff to Israel."[191][192] Responding in 1990 to a journalist from The Jewish Chronicle, whom he considered rude, he said: "I am an old hand at dealing with you buggers."[193]

Jeremy Treglown, in his 1994 biography, writes of Dahl's first novel Sometime Never (1948): "plentiful revelations about Nazi anti-Semitism and the Holocaust did not discourage him from satirising 'a little pawnbroker in Hounsditch called Meatbein who, when the wailing started, would rush downstairs to the large safe in which he kept his money, open it and wriggle inside on to the lowest shelf where he lay like a hibernating hedgehog until the all-clear had gone.'"[194] In a short story entitled "Madame Rosette", the eponymous character is termed "a filthy old Syrian Jewess".[194]

Dahl had Jewish friends, including the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who commented: "I thought he might say anything. Could have been pro-Arab or pro-Jew. There was no consistent line. He was a man who followed whims, which meant he would blow up in one direction, so to speak."[187] Amelia Foster, director of the Roald Dahl Museum in Great Missenden, says: "This is again an example of how Dahl refused to take anything seriously, even himself. He was very angry at the Israelis. He had a childish reaction to what was going on in Israel. Dahl wanted to provoke, as he always provoked at dinner. His publisher was a Jew, his agent was a Jew... and he thought nothing but good things of them. He asked me to be his managing director, and I'm Jewish."[195]

In 2014, the Royal Mint decided not to produce a coin to commemorate the centenary of Dahl's birth, saying that it considered him to be "associated with antisemitism and not regarded as an author of the highest reputation".[192] In 2020, Dahl's family published a statement on the official Roald Dahl website apologising for his antisemitism.[196][197] The statement says "The Dahl family and the Roald Dahl Story Company deeply apologise for the lasting and understandable hurt caused by some of Roald Dahl’s statements. Those prejudiced remarks are incomprehensible to us and stand in marked contrast to the man we knew and to the values at the heart of Roald Dahl's stories, which have positively impacted young people for generations. We hope that, just as he did at his best, at his absolute worst, Roald Dahl can help remind us of the lasting impact of words."[191] The apology was received with appreciation by Jewish groups but some organisations, such as the Campaign Against Antisemitism, said that: "For his family and estate to have waited thirty years to make an apology, apparently until lucrative deals were signed with Hollywood, is disappointing and sadly rather more comprehensible."[196]

Use of racial and sexist stereotypes

In 1972, Eleanor Cameron, also a children's book author, published an article in The Horn Book criticising Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for being self-referentially hypocritical:

"What I object to in Charlie is its phony presentation of poverty and its phony humor, which is based on punishment with overtones of sadism; its hypocrisy which is epitomized in its moral stuck like a marshmallow in a lump of fudge — that TV is horrible and hateful and time-wasting and that children should read good books instead, when in fact the book itself is like nothing so much as one of the more specious television shows."

Cameron took issue with the depiction of the Oompa-Loompas as imported African slaves and suggested that teachers look for better literature to use in the classroom.[198] In 1973, Dahl posted a reply, calling Cameron's accusations "insensitive" and "monstrous".[199] The Horn Book published Cameron's response, where she clarified that she intended her article not to be a personal attack on Dahl, but to point out that though the book is a work of fiction, it still influences reality. She again objected to the Oompa-Loompa depiction: "[T]he situation of the Oompa-Loompas is real; it could not be more so, and it is anything but funny."[200] The debate between the two authors sparked much discussion and a number of letters to the editor.[201]

A 1991 article by Michael Dirda published in The Washington Post, echoed Cameron's comments, writing "the Oompa-Loompas... reveal virtually every stereotype about blacks".[202] Dirda's article also discussed many of the other criticisms of Dahl's writing, including his alleged misogyny. He wrote "The Witches verges on a general misogyny"[202] and Michele Landsberg's 1998 article analysing the alleged issues in Dahl's work also stated: "Throughout his work, evil, domineering, smelly, fat, ugly women are his favorite villains."[203]

In 2008, Una Malley wrote an article that described Dahl's short story collection Switch Bitch as "a collection better forgotten, laden with crude and often disturbing sexual fantasy writing". Nonetheless, Malley argued that there are feminist messages in Dahl's work, even if they may be obscured: "The Witches offers up plenty of feminist complexities. The witches themselves are terrifying and vile things, and always women... The book is often viewed as sexist, but that assessment ignores one of the heroines of the story, the child narrator's grandmother."[204]

2023 revisions

Main article: Roald Dahl revision controversy

In 2023, Puffin Books, which holds the rights to all Dahl's children's books, ignited controversy after they hired sensitivity readers to go through the original text of Dahl's works, which led to hundreds of revisions to his books; The Telegraph published a list of many of these changes.[205] The move was supported by a number of authors, most notably by Joanne Harris, chair of the Society of Authors, but drew many more critical responses.[206] Several public figures, including Rishi Sunak, Salman Rushdie, and Camilla, Queen Consort all spoke out against the changes.[207][208][209][210] It was reported that when Dahl was alive, he had spoken out very strongly against any changes ever being made to any of his books.[211][212] On 23 February 2023, Puffin announced it would release an unedited selection of Dahl's children's books as 'The Roald Dahl Classic Collection', stating "We've listened to the debate over the past week which has reaffirmed the extraordinary power of Roald Dahl's books" and "recognise the importance of keeping Dahl's classic texts in print."[213][214]

Filmography

Writing roles

Year Title Role Notes
1950 Suspense Story 1 episode
1952 CBS Television Workshop
Lux Video Theatre
1954 Philip Morris Playhouse
Danger
1955 Star Tonight
Cameo Theatre
1958 Suspicion
1958–61 Alfred Hitchcock Presents 7 episodes
1961 'Way Out 1 episode
1962 That Was the Week That Was
1964 36 Hours Feature film
1965–67 Thirty-Minute Theatre 3 episodes
1967 You Only Live Twice Screenplay Feature film
1968 Late Night Horror Writer 1 episode
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Screenplay Feature film
Jackanory 10 episodes
1971 The Road Builder Feature film
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory Story/screenplay
1979–88 Tales of the Unexpected Writer/story 26 episodes
1985 The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents Story 1 episode
1989 The BFG Feature film
The Book Tower Writer 1 episode
Danny, the Champion of the World Story TV movie

Presenting roles

Year Title Role Notes
1961 'Way Out Host 5 episodes
1965 Thirty-Minute Theatre Narrator 1 episode

Non-presenting appearances

Year Title Role Notes
1969 The 41st Annual Academy Awards Himself Audience member
1978 Read All About It 1 episode
This Is Your Life 1 episode
1979–85 Tales of the Unexpected 32 episodes
1989 Going Live! 1 episode

Publications

Main articles: Roald Dahl bibliography and Roald Dahl short stories bibliography

Notes

  1. ^ Norwegian: [ˈrùːɑɫ ˈdɑːɫ],[215][216] commonly pronounced in English as /ˈroʊ.əld ˈdɑːl/ ROH-əld DAHL.[217]

References

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  2. ^ Sturrock 2010, p. 19.
  3. ^ a b "Penguin to publish "classic" Roald Dahl books after "censorship" backlash". www.cbsnews.com. 24 February 2023.
  4. ^ a b Nunis 2016.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h "Once upon a time, there was a man who liked to make up stories ..." The Independent. 12 December 2010. Retrieved 16 September 2014.
  6. ^ a b c "Roald Dahl centenary: 'Tremendous things' promised for 2016". BBC News. BBC. 6 July 2015. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
  7. ^ a b "Fans gather for Dahl celebration". BBC. 13 September 2006. Retrieved 16 September 2014.
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  9. ^ Freeman, Abigail (30 October 2021). "The Highest-Paid Dead Celebrities 2021". Forbes. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
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  12. ^ a b Hamlin 2015.
  13. ^ a b de Castella 2011.
  14. ^ Berntsen, Erik (21 October 2020). "Harald Dahl b. 1863 Sarpsborg, Østfold d. 1920 Wales: Erik Berntsens slektssider". Erik Berntsens slektssider. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  15. ^ Howard 2017.
  16. ^ a b "Roald Dahl Timeline • Roald Dahl Facts". Roald Dahl Facts. Retrieved 14 March 2019.
  17. ^ Palfrey 2006, p. 76.
  18. ^ Dahl, Roald (1999). "Min mor". I Roald Dahls kjøkken. Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag. p. 65. ISBN 8205256136.
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  49. ^ Sturrock 2010, pp. 93–94.
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  60. ^ Thomas 2003, p. 36.
  61. ^ Dahl 2013b, p. 151.
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  66. ^ Sturrock 2010, p. 163.
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  76. ^ Schoeck 2006, p. 221.
  77. ^ MacDonald 2001, p. 249.
  78. ^ MacDonald 2001, p. 243.
  79. ^ "No. 37681". The London Gazette (Supplement). 9 August 1946. p. 4054.
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Sources

  • Ayto, John (2012). The Diner's Dictionary: Word Origins of Food and Drink. Oxford: University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-964024-9.
  • Burton, Tim (2006). Mark Salisbury (ed.). Burton on Burton (2nd Revised ed.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-571-22926-0.
  • Clifton, Tony; Leroy, Catherine (1983). God Cried. Quartet. ISBN 978-0-7043-2375-9.
  • Conant, Jennet (2008). The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4165-8032-4.
  • Craats, Rennay (2014). Roald Dahl. WEIGL. ISBN 978-1-4896-0676-1.
  • Criado, Elisa (29 August 2014). "Aldi removes Roald Dahl book from Australian stores". The Independent. Retrieved 23 September 2020.
  • Dahl, Roald (2013a) [1984]. Boy:tales of childhood. London: Penguin Group. ISBN 978-0-141-34986-2. OCLC 1193367039.
  • Dahl, Roald (2013b) [1986]. Going solo. London: Penguin Group. ISBN 978-0-14-01-0306-9. OCLC 1035312298.
  • de Castella, Tom (12 September 2011). "The darkness of Dahl". BBC News. Retrieved 23 September 2020.
  • Donald, Graeme (2008). Sticklers, Sideburns & Bikinis: The Military Origins of Everyday Words and Phrases. Bloomsbury USA. ISBN 978-1-84603-300-1.
  • Farrell, Barry (1971). Pat and Roald. Dell Publishing.
  • Hamlin, Dominic (27 November 2015). "Roald Dahl's greatest philosophical quotes ever". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 September 2020.
  • Head, Dominic, ed. (2006). The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-83179-6.
  • Howard, Philip (1 September 2017). "Dahl, Roald (1916–1990)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/39827. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  • Larner, Andrew (2008). (PDF). Advances in Clinical Neuroscience and Rehabilitation. Vol. 8, no. 1. ISSN 1473-9348. S2CID 163529827. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 March 2012. Retrieved 7 November 2008.
  • McCall, Douglas (2013). Monty Python: A Chronology, 1969–2012 (2nd ed.). McFarland. ISBN 9780786478118.
  • MacDonald, Bill (2001). The True Intrepid: Sir William Stephenson and the Unknown Agents. Raincoast Books. ISBN 978-1-55192-418-2.
  • Marlow, Jean (2009). Audition Speeches for 6-16 Year Olds: 50+ audition pieces for actors and actresses. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-4081-4107-6.
  • Maunder, Andrew (2007). The Facts on File Companion to the British Short Story. Infobase. ISBN 978-0-8160-7496-9.
  • McElmeel, Sharron L. (1999). "Roald Dahl". 100 Most Popular Children's Authors: Biographical Sketches and Bibliographies. Libraries Unlimited. ISBN 978-1-56308-646-5.
  • Mottram, James (2006). The Sundance kids: how the mavericks took back Hollywood. Macmillan. ISBN 9780571222674.
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  • Schoeck, Ellen (October 2006). I Was There: A Century of Alumni Stories about the University of Alberta, 1906–2006. University of Alberta. ISBN 978-0-88864-464-0.
  • Shores, Christopher; Williams, Clive (2008). Aces High: A Tribute to the Most Notable Fighter Pilots of the British and Commonwealth Forces of WWII. Vol. One. Grub Street Publishing. ISBN 978-1-898697-00-8.
  • Solomon, Tom (2016). Roald Dahl's Marvellous Medicine. Liverpool University Press. ISBN 9781781383469.
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Further reading

  • Jason Hook, Roald Dahl: The Storyteller, Raintree, 2004
  • Held, Jacob M. (2014). Roald Dahl and Philosophy: A Little Nonsense Now and Then. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 9781442222533.
  • Jennifer, Boothroyd (2007). Roald Dahl: A Life of Imagination. Lerner Publishing Group. ISBN 9780822588269.

Kelley, True (2012). Who Was Roald Dahl?. Penguin Group US. ISBN 9781101620823.

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Roald Dahl.
 
Wikiquote has quotations related to Roald Dahl.
  • Official website  
  • Roald Dahl's darkest hour (biography excerpt)
  • Roald Dahl at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
  • Roald Dahl at IMDb
  • Works by Roald Dahl at Open Library  
  • (in Norwegian)
  • "The Devious Bachelor", Sunday Book Review of The Irregulars, Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington by Jennet Conant, The New York Times, 17 October 2008
  • Profile of Patricia Neal (2011) on Voice of America (VOAnews.com), with transcript
  • Footage of one Whitbread Book Prize presentation by Dahl (1982)

April 08, 2023
roald, dahl, september, 1916, november, 1990, british, popular, author, children, literature, short, stories, poet, wartime, fighter, books, have, sold, more, than, million, copies, worldwide, dahl, been, called, greatest, storytellers, children, 20th, century. Roald Dahl a 13 September 1916 23 November 1990 was a British popular author of children s literature and short stories a poet and wartime fighter ace 1 2 His books have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide 3 4 Dahl has been called one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century 5 Roald DahlDahl in April 1954Born 1916 09 13 13 September 1916Cardiff WalesDied23 November 1990 1990 11 23 aged 74 Oxford EnglandOccupationNovelistpoetscreenwriterEducationThe Cathedral School Llandaff St Peter s School Weston super Mare Repton SchoolPeriod1942 1990GenreFantasySpousePatricia Neal m 1953 div 1983 wbr Felicity Crosland m 1983 wbr ChildrenOliviaTessaTheoOpheliaLucyRelativesSophie Dahl granddaughter Phoebe Dahl granddaughter Nicholas Logsdail nephew SignatureMilitary careerAllegianceUnited KingdomService wbr branchRoyal Air ForceYears of service1939 1946RankSquadron LeaderUnitNo 80 Squadron RAFBattles warsSecond World War Battle of Greece Syria Lebanon CampaignDahl was born in Wales to affluent Norwegian immigrant parents and spent most of his life in England He served in the Royal Air Force RAF during the Second World War He became a fighter pilot and subsequently an intelligence officer rising to the rank of acting wing commander He rose to prominence as a writer in the 1940s with works for children and for adults and he became one of the world s best selling authors 6 7 His awards for contribution to literature include the 1983 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the British Book Awards Children s Author of the Year in 1990 In 2008 The Times placed Dahl 16th on its list of The 50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945 8 In 2021 Forbes ranked him the top earning dead celebrity 9 Dahl s short stories are known for their unexpected endings and his children s books for their unsentimental macabre often darkly comic mood featuring villainous adult enemies of the child characters 10 11 His children s books champion the kindhearted and feature an underlying warm sentiment 12 13 His works for children include James and the Giant Peach Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Matilda The Witches Fantastic Mr Fox The BFG The Twits George s Marvellous Medicine and Danny the Champion of the World His works for older audiences include the short story collections Tales of the Unexpected and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More Contents 1 Early life 1 1 Childhood 1 2 Repton School 1 3 After school 2 Fighter pilot 3 Diplomat writer and intelligence officer 4 Post war life 5 Writing 5 1 Children s fiction 5 2 Screenplays 5 3 Influences 5 4 Television 6 Death and legacy 7 Criticism and controversy 7 1 Anti Semitic and Anti Israel Comments 7 2 Use of racial and sexist stereotypes 7 3 2023 revisions 8 Filmography 8 1 Writing roles 8 2 Presenting roles 8 3 Non presenting appearances 9 Publications 10 Notes 11 References 11 1 Sources 11 2 Further reading 12 External linksEarly lifeChildhood Dahl at age 10 with his sisters Alfhild Else and Asta Cardiff 1927 Roald Dahl was born in 1916 at Villa Marie Fairwater Road in Llandaff Cardiff Wales to Norwegians Harald Dahl 1863 1920 and Sofie Magdalene Dahl nee Hesselberg 1885 1967 14 15 Dahl s father a wealthy shipbroker and self made man had emigrated to the UK from Sarpsborg in Norway and settled in Cardiff in the 1880s with his first wife Frenchwoman Marie Beaurin Gresser They had two children together Ellen Marguerite and Louis before her death in 1907 16 Roald Dahl s mother belonged to a well established Norwegian family of lawyers priests in the state church and wealthy merchants and estate owners and emigrated to the UK when she married his father in 1911 Dahl was named after Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen His first language was Norwegian which he spoke at home with his parents and his sisters Astri Alfhild and Else The children were raised in Norway s Lutheran state church the Church of Norway and were baptised at the Norwegian Church Cardiff 17 His maternal grandmother Ellen Wallace was a granddaughter of the member of parliament Georg Wallace and a descendant of an early 18th century Scottish immigrant to Norway 18 Mrs Pratchett s former sweet shop in Llandaff Cardiff has a blue plaque dedicated to Dahl His autobiography Boy recalls the prank he and his friends played on her in a jar of gobstoppers 19 Dahl s sister Astri died from appendicitis at age seven in 1920 when Dahl was three years old and his father died of pneumonia at age 57 several weeks later 20 Later that year his youngest sister Asta was born 16 Upon his death Harald Dahl left a fortune assessed for probate of 158 917 10s 0d equivalent to 6 791 035 in 2021 21 22 23 Dahl s mother decided to remain in Wales instead of returning to Norway to live with relatives as her husband had wanted their children to be educated in English schools which he considered the world s best 24 When he was six years old Dahl met his idol Beatrix Potter author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit featuring the mischievous Peter Rabbit the first licensed fictional character 25 26 In 2020 their meeting would be dramatised in the television drama film Roald amp Beatrix The Tail of the Curious Mouse 27 28 Dahl first attended The Cathedral School Llandaff At age eight he and four of his friends were caned by the headmaster after putting a dead mouse in a jar of gobstoppers at the local sweet shop 5 which was owned by a mean and loathsome old woman named Mrs Pratchett 5 The five boys named their prank the Great Mouse Plot of 1924 29 Mrs Pratchett inspired Dahl s creation of the cruel headmistress Miss Trunchbull in Matilda and a prank this time in a water jug belonging to Trunchbull would also appear in the book 30 31 Gobstoppers were a favourite sweet among British schoolboys between the two World Wars and Dahl referred to them in his fictional Everlasting Gobstopper which was featured in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 32 Dahl transferred to St Peter s boarding school in Weston super Mare His parents had wanted him to be educated at an English public school and this proved to be the nearest because of the regular ferry link across the Bristol Channel Dahl s time at St Peter s was unpleasant he was very homesick and wrote to his mother every week but never revealed his unhappiness to her After her death in 1967 he learned that she had saved every one of his letters 33 they were broadcast in abridged form as BBC Radio 4 s Book of the Week in 2016 to mark the centenary of his birth 34 Dahl wrote about his time at St Peter s in his autobiography Boy Tales of Childhood 35 Repton School Dahl attended Repton School in Derbyshire from 1929 to 1934 From 1929 when he was 13 Dahl attended Repton School in Derbyshire Dahl disliked the hazing and described an environment of ritual cruelty and status domination with younger boys having to act as personal servants for older boys frequently subject to terrible beatings His biographer Donald Sturrock described these violent experiences in Dahl s early life 36 Dahl expresses some of these darker experiences in his writings which is also marked by his hatred of cruelty and corporal punishment 37 According to Dahl s autobiography Boy Tales of Childhood a friend named Michael was viciously caned by headmaster Geoffrey Fisher Writing in that same book Dahl reflected All through my school life I was appalled by the fact that masters and senior boys were allowed literally to wound other boys and sometimes quite severely I couldn t get over it I never have got over it 38 Fisher was later appointed Archbishop of Canterbury and he crowned Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 However according to Dahl s biographer Jeremy Treglown 39 the caning took place in May 1933 a year after Fisher had left Repton the headmaster was in fact J T Christie Fisher s successor as headmaster Dahl said the incident caused him to have doubts about religion and even about God 40 He was never seen as a particularly talented writer in his school years with one of his English teachers writing in his school report I have never met anybody who so persistently writes words meaning the exact opposite of what is intended 41 Dahl was exceptionally tall reaching 6 feet 6 inches 1 98 m in adult life 42 He played sports including cricket football and golf and was made captain of the squash team 43 As well as having a passion for literature he developed an interest in photography and often carried a camera with him 20 During his years at Repton the Cadbury chocolate company occasionally sent boxes of new chocolates to the school to be tested by the pupils 44 Dahl dreamt of inventing a new chocolate bar that would win the praise of Mr Cadbury himself this inspired him in writing his third children s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 1964 and to refer to chocolate in other children s books 45 Throughout his childhood and adolescent years Dahl spent the majority of his summer holidays with his mother s family in Norway He wrote about many happy memories from those visits in Boy Tales of Childhood such as when he replaced the tobacco in his half sister s fiance s pipe with goat droppings 46 He noted only one unhappy memory of his holidays in Norway at around the age of eight he had to have his adenoids removed by a doctor 47 His childhood and first job selling kerosene in Midsomer Norton and surrounding villages in Somerset are subjects in Boy Tales of Childhood 48 After school After finishing his schooling in August 1934 Dahl crossed the Atlantic on the RMS Nova Scotia and hiked through Newfoundland with the Public Schools Exploring Society 49 50 In July 1934 Dahl joined the Shell Petroleum Company Following two years of training in the United Kingdom he was assigned first to Mombasa Kenya then to Dar es Salaam in the British colony of Tanganyika now part of Tanzania 51 Dahl explains in his autobiography Going Solo that only three young Englishmen ran the Shell company in the territory of which he was the youngest and junior 52 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 out on assignments supplying oil to customers across Tanganyika he encountered black mamba snakes and lions among other wildlife 51 Fighter pilot Dahl s leather flying helmet on display in the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in Great Missenden In August 1939 as the Second World War loomed the British made plans to round up the hundreds of Germans living in Dar es Salaam Dahl was commissioned as a lieutenant into the King s African Rifles commanding a platoon of Askari men indigenous troops who were serving in the colonial army 53 In November 1939 Dahl joined the Royal Air Force RAF as an aircraftman with service number 774022 54 After a 600 mile 970 km car journey from Dar es Salaam to Nairobi he was accepted for flight training with sixteen other men of whom only three survived the war With seven hours and 40 minutes experience in a De Havilland Tiger Moth he flew solo 55 Dahl enjoyed watching the wildlife of Kenya during his flights He continued to advanced flying training in Iraq at RAF Habbaniya 50 miles 80 km west of Baghdad Following six months training on Hawker Harts Dahl was commissioned as a pilot officer on 24 August 1940 and was judged ready to join a squadron and face the enemy 54 56 Dahl was flying a Gloster Gladiator when he crash landed in Libya He was assigned to No 80 Squadron RAF flying obsolete Gloster Gladiators the last biplane fighter aircraft used by the RAF Dahl was surprised to find that he would not receive any specialised training in aerial combat or in flying Gladiators On 19 September 1940 Dahl was ordered to fly his Gladiator by stages from Abu Sueir near Ismailia in Egypt to 80 Squadron s forward airstrip 30 miles 48 km 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 57 The undercarriage hit a boulder and the aircraft crashed Dahl s skull was fractured and his nose was smashed he was temporarily blinded 58 He managed to drag himself away from the blazing wreckage and lost consciousness He wrote about the crash in his first published work 58 Dahl was rescued and taken to a first aid post in Mersa Matruh where he regained consciousness but not his sight He was transported by train to the Royal Navy hospital in Alexandria There he fell in and out of love with a nurse Mary Welland A RAF inquiry into the crash revealed that the location to which he had been told to fly was completely wrong and he had mistakenly been sent instead to the no man s land between the Allied and Italian forces 59 A Hawker Hurricane Mk 1 the aircraft type in which Dahl engaged in aerial combat over Greece In February 1941 Dahl was discharged from the hospital and deemed 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 experience flying Hurricanes By this stage in the Greek campaign the RAF had only 18 combat aircraft in Greece 14 Hurricanes and four Bristol Blenheim light bombers Dahl flew in his first aerial combat on 15 April 1941 while flying alone over the city of Chalcis He attacked six Junkers Ju 88s that were bombing ships and shot one down On 16 April in another air battle he shot down another Ju 88 60 On 20 April 1941 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 Of 12 Hurricanes involved five were shot down and four of their pilots killed including Pattle Greek observers on the ground counted 22 German aircraft downed but because of the confusion of the aerial engagement none of the pilots knew which aircraft they had shot down Dahl described it as an endless blur of enemy fighters whizzing towards me from every side 61 In May as the Germans were pressing on Athens Dahl was evacuated to Egypt His squadron was reassembled in Haifa From there Dahl flew sorties every day for a period of four weeks shooting down a Vichy French Air Force Potez 63 on 8 June and another Ju 88 on 15 June In a memoir Dahl recounts in detail an attack by him and his fellow Hurricane pilots on the Vichy held Rayak airfield He says that as he and his fellow Hurricane pilots swept in low over the field at midday we saw to our astonishment a bunch of girls in brightly coloured cotton dresses standing out by the planes with glasses in their hands having drinks with the French pilots and I remember seeing bottles of wine standing on the wing of one of the planes as we went swooshing over It was a Sunday morning and the Frenchmen were evidently entertaining their girlfriends and showing off their aircraft to them which was a very French thing to do in the middle of a war at a front line aerodrome Every one of us held our fire on that first pass over the flying field and it was wonderfully comical to see the girls all dropping their wine glasses and galloping in their high heels for the door of the nearest building We went round again but this time we were no longer a surprise and they were ready for us with their ground defences and I am afraid that our chivalry resulted in damage to several of our Hurricanes including my own But we destroyed five of their planes on the ground 62 Despite this somewhat light hearted account Dahl also noted that ultimately Vichy forces killed four of the nine Hurricane pilots in his squadron Describing the Vichy forces as disgusting he stated that thousands of lives were lost and I for one have never forgiven the Vichy French for the unnecessary slaughter they caused 63 When he began to get severe headaches that caused him to black out he was invalided home to Britain where he stayed with his mother in Buckinghamshire 64 Though at this time Dahl was only a pilot officer on probation in September 1941 he was simultaneously confirmed as a pilot officer and promoted to war substantive flying officer 65 Diplomat writer and intelligence officerAfter being invalided home Dahl was posted to an RAF training camp in Uxbridge He attempted to recover his health enough to become an instructor 66 In late March 1942 while in London he met the Under Secretary of State for Air Major Harold Balfour at his club Impressed by Dahl s war record and conversational abilities Balfour appointed the young man as assistant air attache at the British Embassy in Washington D C Initially resistant Dahl was finally persuaded by Balfour to accept and took passage on the MS Batory from Glasgow a few days later He arrived in Halifax Canada on 14 April after which he took a sleeper train to Montreal 67 Coming from war starved Britain in what was a wartime period of rationing in the United Kingdom Dahl was amazed by the wealth of food and amenities to be had in North America 68 Arriving in Washington a week later Dahl found he liked the atmosphere of the US capital He shared a house with another attache at 1610 34th Street NW in Georgetown But after ten days in his new posting Dahl strongly disliked it feeling he had taken on a most ungodly unimportant job 69 He later explained I d just come from the war People were getting killed I had been flying around seeing horrible things Now almost instantly I found myself in the middle of a pre war cocktail party in America 70 Dahl was unimpressed by his office in the British Air Mission attached to the embassy He was also unimpressed by the ambassador Lord Halifax with whom he sometimes played tennis and whom he described as a courtly English gentleman Dahl socialised with Charles E Marsh a Texas publisher and oilman at his house at 2136 R Street NW and the Marsh country estate in Virginia 71 72 As part of his duties as assistant air attache Dahl was to help neutralise the isolationist views still held by many Americans by giving pro British speeches and discussing his war service the United States had entered the war only the previous December following the attack on Pearl Harbor 56 At this time Dahl met the noted British novelist C S Forester who was also working to aid the British war effort Forester worked for the British Ministry of Information and was writing propaganda for the Allied cause mainly for American consumption 73 The Saturday Evening Post had asked Forester to write a story based on Dahl s flying experiences Forester asked Dahl to write down some RAF anecdotes so that he could shape them into a story After Forester read what Dahl had given him he decided to publish the story exactly as Dahl had written it 74 He originally titled the article as A Piece of Cake but the magazine changed it to Shot Down Over Libya to make it sound more dramatic although Dahl had not been shot down it was published on 1 August 1942 issue of the Post Dahl was promoted to flight lieutenant war substantive in August 1942 75 Later he worked with such other well known British officers as Ian Fleming who later published the popular James Bond series and David Ogilvy promoting Britain s interests and message in the US and combating the America First movement 56 This work introduced Dahl to espionage and the activities of the Canadian spymaster William Stephenson known by the codename Intrepid 76 During the war Dahl supplied intelligence from Washington to Prime Minister Winston Churchill As Dahl later said My job was to try to help Winston to get on with FDR and tell Winston what was in the old boy s mind 74 Dahl also supplied intelligence to Stephenson and his organisation known as British Security Coordination which was part of MI6 72 Dahl was once sent back to Britain by British Embassy officials supposedly for misconduct I got booted out by the big boys he said Stephenson promptly sent him back to Washington with a promotion to wing commander rank 77 Toward the end of the war Dahl wrote some of the history of the secret organisation he and Stephenson remained friends for decades after the war 78 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 79 His record of five aerial victories qualifying him as a flying ace has been confirmed by post war research and cross referenced in Axis records It is most likely that he scored more than those victories during 20 April 1941 when 22 German aircraft were shot down 80 Post war life Patricia Neal and Roald Dahl Dahl married American actress Patricia Neal on 2 July 1953 at Trinity Church in New York City Their marriage lasted for 30 years and they had five children Olivia Twenty 1955 1962 Chantal Sophia Tessa born 1957 who became an author and mother of author cookbook writer and former model Sophie Dahl after whom Sophie in The BFG is named 81 Theo Matthew born 1960 Ophelia Magdalena born 1964 Lucy Neal born 1965 82 On 5 December 1960 four month old Theo Dahl was severely injured when his baby carriage was struck by a taxicab 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 improve the shunt used to alleviate the condition 83 84 The valve was a collaboration between Dahl hydraulic engineer Stanley Wade and London s Great Ormond Street Hospital neurosurgeon Kenneth Till and was used successfully on almost 3 000 children around the world 85 In November 1962 Dahl s daughter Olivia died of measles encephalitis age seven Her death left Dahl limp with despair and feeling guilty about not having been able to do anything for her 85 Dahl subsequently became a proponent of immunisation writing Measles A Dangerous Illness in 1988 in response to measles cases in the UK and dedicated his 1982 book The BFG to his daughter 86 87 After Olivia s death and a meeting with a Church official Dahl came to view Christianity as a sham 88 In mourning he had sought spiritual guidance from Geoffrey Fisher the former Archbishop of Canterbury and was dismayed being told that although Olivia was in Paradise her beloved dog Rowley would never join her there 88 Dahl recalled years later I wanted to ask him how he could be so absolutely sure that other creatures did not get the same special treatment as us I sat there wondering if this great and famous churchman really knew what he was talking about and whether he knew anything at all about God or heaven and if he didn t then who in the world did 88 In 1965 Dahl s wife Patricia Neal suffered three burst cerebral aneurysms while pregnant with their fifth child Lucy Dahl took control of her rehabilitation over the next months Neal had to re learn to talk and walk but she managed to return to her acting career 89 This period of their lives was dramatised in the film The Patricia Neal Story 1981 in which the couple were played by Glenda Jackson and Dirk Bogarde 90 Dahl age 72 signing books in Amsterdam Netherlands October 1988 In 1972 Roald Dahl met Felicity d Abreu Crosland niece of Lt Col Francis D Abreu who was married to Margaret Bowes Lyon the first cousin of the Queen Mother while Felicity was working as a set designer on an advert for Maxim coffee with the author s then wife Patricia Neal 91 Soon after the pair were introduced they began an 11 year affair 91 In 1983 Neal and Dahl divorced and Dahl married Felicity 92 93 at Brixton Town Hall South London Felicity known as Liccy gave up her job and moved into Gipsy House Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire which had been Dahl s home since 1954 94 In the 1986 New Years Honours List Dahl was offered an appointment to Officer of the Order of the British Empire OBE but turned it down He reportedly wanted a knighthood so that his wife would be Lady Dahl 95 96 In 2012 Dahl was featured in the list of The New Elizabethans to mark the diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II A panel of seven academics journalists and historians named Dahl among the group of people in the UK whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands and given the age its character 97 In September 2016 Dahl s daughter Lucy received the BBC s Blue Peter Gold badge in his honour the first time it had ever been awarded posthumously 98 Writing Roald Dahl s story The Devious Bachelor was illustrated by Frederick Siebel when it was published in Collier s September 1953 Dahl s first published work inspired by a meeting with C S Forester was A Piece of Cake on 1 August 1942 The story about his wartime adventures was bought by The Saturday Evening Post for US 1 000 equivalent to 17 000 in 2021 and published under the title Shot Down Over Libya 99 His first children s book was The Gremlins published in 1943 about mischievous little creatures that were part of Royal Air Force folklore 100 The RAF pilots blamed the gremlins for all the problems with the aircraft 101 The protagonist Gus an RAF pilot like Dahl joins forces with the gremlins against a common enemy Hitler and the Nazis 102 While at the British Embassy in Washington Dahl sent a copy to the First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who read it to her grandchildren 100 and the book was commissioned by Walt Disney for a film that was never made 103 Dahl went on to write some of the best loved children s stories of the 20th century such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Matilda James and the Giant Peach The Witches Fantastic Mr Fox The BFG The Twits and George s Marvellous Medicine 5 Dahl also had a successful parallel career as the writer of macabre adult short stories which often blended humour and innocence with surprising plot twists 104 The Mystery Writers of America presented Dahl with three Edgar Awards for his work and many were originally written for American magazines such as Collier s The Collector s Item was Collier s Star Story of the week for 4 September 1948 Ladies Home Journal Harper s Playboy and The New Yorker 105 Works such as Kiss Kiss subsequently collected Dahl s stories into anthologies and gained significant popularity Dahl wrote more than 60 short stories they have appeared in numerous collections some only being published in book form after his death His three Edgar Awards were given for in 1954 the collection Someone Like You in 1959 the story The Landlady and in 1980 the episode of Tales of the Unexpected based on Skin 104 Roald Dahl s vardo in the garden of his house Gipsy House in Great Missenden where he wrote Danny the Champion of the World in 1975 One of his more famous adult stories The Smoker also known as Man from the South was filmed twice as both 1960 and 1985 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents filmed as a 1979 episode of Tales of the Unexpected and also adapted into Quentin Tarantino s segment of the film Four Rooms 1995 106 This oft anthologised classic concerns a man in Jamaica who wagers with visitors in an attempt to claim the fingers from their hands The original 1960 version in the Hitchcock series stars Steve McQueen and Peter Lorre 106 Five additional Dahl stories were used in the Hitchcock series Dahl was credited with teleplay for two episodes and four of his episodes were directed by Alfred Hitchcock himself an example of which was Lamb to the Slaughter 1958 107 Dahl acquired a traditional Romanichal vardo in the 1960s and the family used it as a playhouse for his children at home in Great Missenden Buckinghamshire He later used the vardo as a writing room where he wrote Danny the Champion of the World in 1975 108 Dahl incorporated a Gypsy wagon into the main plot of the book where the young English boy Danny and his father William played by Jeremy Irons in the film adaptation live in a vardo 109 Many other scenes and characters from Great Missenden are reflected in his work For example the village library was the inspiration for Mrs Phelps library in Matilda where the title character devours classic literature by the age of four 110 His short story collection Tales of the Unexpected was adapted to a successful TV series of the same name beginning with Man from the South 111 When the stock of Dahl s own original stories was exhausted the series continued by adapting stories written in Dahl s style by other authors including John Collier and Stanley Ellin 112 Another collection of short stories The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More was published in 1977 and the eponymous short story will be adapted into a film in 2023 by director Wes Anderson with Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular character Henry Sugar 113 Some of Dahl s 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 114 In his novel My Uncle Oswald the uncle engages a temptress to seduce 20th century geniuses and royalty with a love potion secretly added to chocolate truffles made by Dahl s favourite chocolate shop Prestat of Piccadilly London 114 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 115 116 The last book published in his lifetime Esio Trot released in January 1990 marked a change in style for the author Unlike other Dahl works which often feature tyrannical adults and heroic magical children it is the story of an old lonely man trying to make a connection with a woman he has loved from afar 117 In 1994 the English language audiobook recording of the book was provided by Monty Python member Michael Palin 118 Screenwriter Richard Curtis adapted it into a 2015 BBC television comedy film Roald Dahl s Esio Trot featuring Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench as the couple 119 Children s fiction 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 Illustrator Quentin Blake on the lasting appeal of Dahl s children s books 5 Dahl s children s works are usually told from the point of view of a child They typically involve adult villains who hate and mistreat children and feature at least one good adult to counteract the villain s 5 These stock characters are possibly a reference to the abuse that Dahl stated that he experienced in the boarding schools he attended 5 Dahl s books see the triumph of the child children s book critic Amanda Craig said He was unequivocal that it is the good young and kind who triumph over the old greedy and the wicked 13 Anna Leskiewicz in The Telegraph wrote It s often suggested that Dahl s lasting appeal is a result of his exceptional talent for wriggling his way into children s fantasies and fears and laying them out on the page with anarchic delight Adult villains are drawn in terrifying detail before they are exposed as liars and hypocrites and brought tumbling down with retributive justice either by a sudden magic or the superior acuity of the children they mistreat 117 While his whimsical fantasy stories feature an underlying warm sentiment they are often juxtaposed with grotesque darkly comic and sometimes harshly violent scenarios 10 12 The Witches George s Marvellous Medicine and Matilda are examples of this formula The BFG follows 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 also surface in works such as Fantastic Mr Fox and Danny the Champion of the World where the unpleasant wealthy neighbours are outwitted 74 120 Dahl also features characters who 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 features in James and the Giant Peach and the nasty farmer Boggis in Fantastic Mr Fox is an enormously fat character 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 disregarding the adults who tell him not to and falls in getting sucked up a pipe and nearly being turned into fudge In Matilda Bruce Bogtrotter steals cake from the evil headmistress Miss Trunchbull and is forced to eat a gigantic chocolate cake in front of the school when he unexpectedly succeeds at this Trunchbull smashes the empty plate over his head In The Witches Bruno Jenkins is lured by the witches whose leader is the Grand High Witch into their convention with the promise of chocolate before they turn him into a mouse 121 Aunt Sponge is flattened by a giant peach When Dahl was a boy his 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 the fox family in Fantastic Mr Fox and the trolls in The Minpins 122 Receiving the 1983 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement Dahl encouraged his children and his readers to let their imagination run free His daughter Lucy stated his spirit was so large and so big he taught us to believe in magic 74 She said her father later told her that if they had simply said goodnight after a bedtime story he assumed it wasn t a good idea But if they begged him to continue he knew he was on to something and the story would sometimes turn into a book 123 Those who don t believe in magic will never find it Roald Dahl The Minpins Dahl was also famous for his inventive playful use of language which was a key element to his writing He invented new words by scribbling down his words before swapping letters around and adopting spoonerisms and malapropisms 124 The lexicographer Susan Rennie stated that Dahl built his new words on familiar sounds adding He didn t always explain what his words meant but children can work them out because they often sound like a word they know and he loved using onomatopoeia For example you know that something lickswishy and delumptious is good to eat whereas something uckyslush or rotsome is definitely not He also used sounds that children love to say like squishous and squizzle or fizzlecrump and fizzwiggler 124 A UK television special titled Roald Dahl s Revolting Rule Book which was hosted by Richard E Grant and aired on 22 September 2007 commemorated Dahl s 90th birthday and also celebrated his impact as a children s author in popular culture 125 It also featured eight main rules he applied on all his children s books Just add chocolate Adults can be scary Bad things happen Revenge is sweet Keep a wicked sense of humour Pick perfect pictures Films are fun but books are better Food is fun In 2016 marking the centenary of Dahl s birth Rennie compiled The Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary which includes many of his invented words and their meaning 124 Rennie commented that some of Dahl s words have already escaped his world for example Scrumdiddlyumptious Food that is utterly delicious 124 In his poetry Dahl gives a humorous re interpretation of well known nursery rhymes and fairy tales parodying the narratives and providing surprise endings in place of the traditional happily ever after Dahl s collection of poems Revolting Rhymes is recorded in audiobook form and narrated by actor Alan Cumming 126 Screenplays 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 127 128 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 amp the Chocolate Factory 1971 Dahl later disowned the film saying he was disappointed because he thought it placed too much emphasis on Willy Wonka and not enough on Charlie 129 He was also infuriated by the deviations in the plot devised by David Seltzer in his draft of the screenplay This resulted in his refusal for any more versions of the book to be made in his lifetime as well as an adaptation for the sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator 130 Influences Interior of Dylan Thomas s writing shed Dahl made a replica of it in his own garden in Great Missenden where he wrote many of his stories A major part of Dahl s literary influences stemmed from his childhood In his younger days he was an avid reader especially awed by fantastic tales of heroism and triumph He met his idol Beatrix Potter when he was six years old 28 His other favourite authors included Rudyard Kipling Charles Dickens William Makepeace Thackeray and Frederick Marryat and their works made a lasting mark on his life and writing 131 Joe Sommerlad in The Independent writes Dahl s novels are often dark affairs filled with cruelty bereavement and Dickensian adults prone to gluttony and sadism The author clearly felt compelled to warn his young readers about the evils of the world taking the lesson from earlier fairy tales that they could stand hard truths and would be the stronger for hearing them 132 Dahl was also influenced by Lewis Carroll s Alice s Adventures in Wonderland The Drink Me episode in Alice inspired a scene in Dahl s George s Marvellous Medicine where a tyrannical grandmother drinks a potion and is blown up to the size of a farmhouse 132 Finding too many distractions in his house Dahl remembered the poet Dylan Thomas had found a peaceful shed to write in close to home Dahl travelled to visit Thomas s hut in Carmarthenshire Wales in the 1950s and after taking a look inside decided to make a replica of it to write in 133 Dahl liked ghost stories and claimed that Trolls by Jonas Lie was one of the finest ghost stories ever written While he was still a youngster his mother Sofie Dahl related traditional Norwegian myths and legends from her native homeland to Dahl and his sisters Dahl always maintained that his mother and her stories had a strong influence on his writing In one interview he mentioned She was a great teller of tales Her memory was prodigious and nothing that ever happened to her in her life was forgotten 134 When Dahl started writing and publishing his famous books for children he included a grandmother character in The Witches and later said that she was based directly on his own mother as a tribute 135 136 Television In 1961 Dahl hosted and wrote for a science fiction and horror television anthology series called Way Out which preceded the Twilight Zone series on the CBS network for 14 episodes from March to July 137 One of the last dramatic network shows shot in New York City the entire series is available for viewing at The Paley Center for Media in New York City and Los Angeles 138 He also wrote for the satirical BBC comedy programme That Was the Week That Was which was hosted by David Frost 139 The British television series Tales of the Unexpected originally aired on ITV between 1979 and 1988 140 The series was released to tie in with Dahl s short story anthology of the same name which had introduced readers to many motifs that were common in his writing 111 The series was an anthology of different tales initially based on Dahl s short stories 111 The stories were sometimes sinister sometimes wryly comedic and usually had a twist ending Dahl introduced on camera all the episodes of the first two series which bore the full title Roald Dahl s Tales of the Unexpected 141 Death and legacy Dahl s gravestone Church of St Peter and St Paul Great Missenden Buckinghamshire Roald Dahl died on 23 November 1990 at the age of 74 of a rare cancer of the blood myelodysplastic syndrome in Oxford 142 and was buried in the cemetery at the Church of St Peter and St Paul Great Missenden Buckinghamshire England 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 Today children continue to leave toys and flowers by his grave 143 In November 1996 the Roald Dahl Children s Gallery was opened at the Buckinghamshire County Museum in nearby Aylesbury 144 The main belt asteroid 6223 Dahl discovered by Czech astronomer Antonin Mrkos was named in his memory in 1996 145 146 Roald Dahl Plass Roald Dahl Plass illuminated at night Plaque commemorating Roald Dahl In 2002 one of Cardiff Bay s modern landmarks the Oval Basin plaza was renamed Roald Dahl Plass Plass is Norwegian for place or square alluding to the writer s Norwegian roots There have also been calls from the public for a permanent statue of him to be erected in Cardiff 147 In 2016 the city celebrated the centenary of Dahl s birth in Llandaff Welsh Arts organisations including National Theatre Wales Wales Millennium Centre and Literature Wales came together for a series of events titled Roald Dahl 100 including a Cardiff wide City of the Unexpected which marked his legacy 6 Dahl s charitable commitments in the fields of neurology haematology and literacy during his life have been continued by his widow since his death through Roald Dahl s Marvellous Children s Charity formerly known as the Roald Dahl Foundation 115 The charity provides care and support to seriously ill children and young people throughout the UK 148 In June 2005 the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in the author s home village Great Missenden was officially opened by Cherie Blair wife of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair to celebrate the work of Roald Dahl and advance his work in literacy education 149 Over 50 000 visitors from abroad mainly from Australia Japan the United States and Germany travel to the village museum every year 150 Matilda the Musical has been shown in the West End pictured since November 2011 and on Broadway between 2013 and 2017 In 2008 the UK charity Booktrust and Children s Laureate Michael Rosen inaugurated The Roald Dahl Funny Prize an annual award to authors of humorous children s fiction 151 152 On 14 September 2009 the day after what would have been Dahl s 93rd birthday the first blue plaque in his honour was unveiled in Llandaff 153 Rather than commemorating his place of birth however the plaque was erected on the wall of the former sweet shop and site of The Great Mouse Plot of 1924 that features in the first part of his autobiography Boy It was unveiled by his widow Felicity and son Theo 153 In 2018 Weston super Mare the town described by Dahl as a seedy seaside resort unveiled a blue plaque dedicated to him on the site of the since demolished boarding school Dahl attended St Peter s 154 The anniversary of Dahl s birthday on 13 September is celebrated as Roald Dahl Day in Africa the United Kingdom and Latin America 155 156 157 In honour of Dahl the Royal Gibraltar Post Office issued a set of four stamps in 2010 featuring Quentin Blake s original illustrations for four of the children s books written by Dahl during his long career The BFG The Twits Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda 158 A set of six commemorative Royal Mail stamps was issued in 2012 featuring Blake s illustrations for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory The Witches The Twits Matilda Fantastic Mr Fox and James and the Giant Peach 159 Dahl s influence has extended beyond literary figures For instance film director Tim Burton recalled from childhood the second layer after Dr Seuss of connecting to a writer who gets the idea of the modern fable and the mixture of light and darkness and not speaking down to kids and the kind of politically incorrect humour that kids get I ve always like that and it s shaped everything I ve felt that I ve done 160 Steven Spielberg read The BFG to his children when they were young stating the book celebrates the fact that it s OK to be different as well as to have an active imagination It s very important that we preserve the tradition of allowing young children to run free with their imaginations and magic and imagination are the same thing 161 Actress Scarlett Johansson named Fantastic Mr Fox one of the five books that made a difference to her 162 Dahl has an incredibly distinctive style his subversive unpredictable plots musical prose and caustic wit are impossible to imitate And yet his stories have proved astonishingly malleable Often adapted by equally idiosyncratic writers and directors when translated onto stage and screen his works seamlessly take on the impression of their new maker Like in many of his stories Dahl offers a narrative where troublemaking is rewarded and games and tricks are more successful than following rules Perhaps this more than anything is the reason why Dahl s stories excite the imagination of so many adults and children and why so many storytellers across stage and screen can t resist remaking his tales in their own individual style Right across his body of work playfulness and inventiveness are always prized over boring qualities like obedience and deference In Dahl s world creative disruption is presented in such an appealing delicious light that you can t help but join in the fun Anna Leskiewicz in The Telegraph Why we love the mischievous spirit of Roald Dahl 117 James and the Giant Peach musical playing at the Young People s Theatre in Toronto 2014 Regarded as one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century 5 Dahl was named by The Times one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945 8 He ranks amongst the world s best selling fiction authors with sales estimated at over 300 million 3 4 7 10 and his books have been published in 63 languages 6 163 In 2000 Dahl topped the list of Britain s favourite authors 164 In 2003 four books by Dahl led by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at number 35 ranked among the Top 100 in The Big Read a survey of the British public by the BBC to determine the nation s best loved novel of all time 165 In surveys of UK teachers parents and students Dahl is frequently ranked the best children s writer 166 167 In a 2006 list for the Royal Society of Literature Harry Potter creator J K Rowling named Charlie and the Chocolate Factory one of her top ten books every child should read 168 Critics have commented on the similarities between the Dursley family from Harry Potter and the nightmarish guardians seen in many of Dahl s books such as Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker from James and the Giant Peach Grandma from George s Marvellous Medicine and the Wormwoods from Matilda 169 In 2012 Matilda was ranked number 30 among all time best children s novels in a survey published by School Library Journal a monthly with primarily US audience The Top 100 included four books by Dahl more than any other writer 170 The American magazine Time named three Dahl books in its list of the 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time more than any other author 171 Dahl is one of the most borrowed authors in UK libraries 172 173 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 174 In 2012 Dahl was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork the Beatles Sgt Pepper s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life he most admires 175 176 In 2016 Dahl s enduring popularity was proved by his ranking in Amazon s the top five best selling children s authors on the online store over the last year looking at sales in print and on the Kindle store 177 In a 2017 UK poll of the greatest authors songwriters artists and photographers Dahl was named the greatest storyteller of all time ranking ahead of Dickens Shakespeare Rowling and Spielberg 178 In 2017 the airline Norwegian announced Dahl s image would appear on the tail fin one of their Boeing 737 800 aircraft He is one of the company s six British tail fin heroes joining Queen frontman Freddie Mercury England World Cup winner Bobby Moore novelist Jane Austen pioneering pilot Amy Johnson and aviation entrepreneur Freddie Laker 179 180 In September 2021 Netflix acquired the Roald Dahl Story Company in a deal worth more than 500 million 686 million 181 A film adaptation of Matilda the Musical was released by Netflix and Sony Pictures Releasing in December 2022 and the cast includes Emma Thompson as Miss Trunchbull 182 Criticism and controversyAnti Semitic and Anti Israel Comments Dahl reviewed Australian author Tony Clifton s God Cried a picture book about the siege of West Beirut by the Israeli army during the 1982 Lebanon War 183 The article appeared in the August 1983 issue of the Literary Review and was the subject of much media comment and criticism at the time 184 185 186 According to Dahl until this point in time a race of people meaning Jews had never switched so rapidly from victims to barbarous murderers The empathy of all after the Holocaust had turned into hatred and revulsion 185 Dahl wrote that Clifton s book would make readers violently anti Israeli with Dahl stating I am not anti Semitic I am anti Israel 187 He asked must Israel like Germany be brought to her knees before she learns how to behave in this world 188 The United States he said was so utterly dominated by the great Jewish financial institutions that they dare not defy Israelis 185 Following the Literary Review article Dahl told a journalist from the New Statesman There s a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity maybe it s a kind of lack of generosity towards non Jews I mean there is always a reason why anti anything crops up anywhere even a stinker like Hitler didn t just pick on them for no reason 189 190 In 1990 during an interview with The Independent Dahl explained that his issue with Israel began when they invaded Lebanon in 1982 they killed 22 000 civilians when they bombed Beirut It was very much hushed up in the newspapers because they are primarily Jewish owned I m certainly anti Israeli and I ve become antisemitic in as much as that you get a Jewish person in another country like England strongly supporting Zionism I think they should see both sides It s the same old thing we all know about Jews and the rest of it There aren t any non Jewish publishers anywhere they control the media jolly clever thing to do that s why the president of the United States has to sell all this stuff to Israel 191 192 Responding in 1990 to a journalist from The Jewish Chronicle whom he considered rude he said I am an old hand at dealing with you buggers 193 Jeremy Treglown in his 1994 biography writes of Dahl s first novel Sometime Never 1948 plentiful revelations about Nazi anti Semitism and the Holocaust did not discourage him from satirising a little pawnbroker in Hounsditch called Meatbein who when the wailing started would rush downstairs to the large safe in which he kept his money open it and wriggle inside on to the lowest shelf where he lay like a hibernating hedgehog until the all clear had gone 194 In a short story entitled Madame Rosette the eponymous character is termed a filthy old Syrian Jewess 194 Dahl had Jewish friends including the philosopher Isaiah Berlin who commented I thought he might say anything Could have been pro Arab or pro Jew There was no consistent line He was a man who followed whims which meant he would blow up in one direction so to speak 187 Amelia Foster director of the Roald Dahl Museum in Great Missenden says This is again an example of how Dahl refused to take anything seriously even himself He was very angry at the Israelis He had a childish reaction to what was going on in Israel Dahl wanted to provoke as he always provoked at dinner His publisher was a Jew his agent was a Jew and he thought nothing but good things of them He asked me to be his managing director and I m Jewish 195 In 2014 the Royal Mint decided not to produce a coin to commemorate the centenary of Dahl s birth saying that it considered him to be associated with antisemitism and not regarded as an author of the highest reputation 192 In 2020 Dahl s family published a statement on the official Roald Dahl website apologising for his antisemitism 196 197 The statement says The Dahl family and the Roald Dahl Story Company deeply apologise for the lasting and understandable hurt caused by some of Roald Dahl s statements Those prejudiced remarks are incomprehensible to us and stand in marked contrast to the man we knew and to the values at the heart of Roald Dahl s stories which have positively impacted young people for generations We hope that just as he did at his best at his absolute worst Roald Dahl can help remind us of the lasting impact of words 191 The apology was received with appreciation by Jewish groups but some organisations such as the Campaign Against Antisemitism said that For his family and estate to have waited thirty years to make an apology apparently until lucrative deals were signed with Hollywood is disappointing and sadly rather more comprehensible 196 Use of racial and sexist stereotypesIn 1972 Eleanor Cameron also a children s book author published an article in The Horn Book criticising Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for being self referentially hypocritical What I object to in Charlie is its phony presentation of poverty and its phony humor which is based on punishment with overtones of sadism its hypocrisy which is epitomized in its moral stuck like a marshmallow in a lump of fudge that TV is horrible and hateful and time wasting and that children should read good books instead when in fact the book itself is like nothing so much as one of the more specious television shows Cameron took issue with the depiction of the Oompa Loompas as imported African slaves and suggested that teachers look for better literature to use in the classroom 198 In 1973 Dahl posted a reply calling Cameron s accusations insensitive and monstrous 199 The Horn Book published Cameron s response where she clarified that she intended her article not to be a personal attack on Dahl but to point out that though the book is a work of fiction it still influences reality She again objected to the Oompa Loompa depiction T he situation of the Oompa Loompas is real it could not be more so and it is anything but funny 200 The debate between the two authors sparked much discussion and a number of letters to the editor 201 A 1991 article by Michael Dirda published in The Washington Post echoed Cameron s comments writing the Oompa Loompas reveal virtually every stereotype about blacks 202 Dirda s article also discussed many of the other criticisms of Dahl s writing including his alleged misogyny He wrote The Witches verges on a general misogyny 202 and Michele Landsberg s 1998 article analysing the alleged issues in Dahl s work also stated Throughout his work evil domineering smelly fat ugly women are his favorite villains 203 In 2008 Una Malley wrote an article that described Dahl s short story collection Switch Bitch as a collection better forgotten laden with crude and often disturbing sexual fantasy writing Nonetheless Malley argued that there are feminist messages in Dahl s work even if they may be obscured The Witches offers up plenty of feminist complexities The witches themselves are terrifying and vile things and always women The book is often viewed as sexist but that assessment ignores one of the heroines of the story the child narrator s grandmother 204 2023 revisions Main article Roald Dahl revision controversy In 2023 Puffin Books which holds the rights to all Dahl s children s books ignited controversy after they hired sensitivity readers to go through the original text of Dahl s works which led to hundreds of revisions to his books The Telegraph published a list of many of these changes 205 The move was supported by a number of authors most notably by Joanne Harris chair of the Society of Authors but drew many more critical responses 206 Several public figures including Rishi Sunak Salman Rushdie and Camilla Queen Consort all spoke out against the changes 207 208 209 210 It was reported that when Dahl was alive he had spoken out very strongly against any changes ever being made to any of his books 211 212 On 23 February 2023 Puffin announced it would release an unedited selection of Dahl s children s books as The Roald Dahl Classic Collection stating We ve listened to the debate over the past week which has reaffirmed the extraordinary power of Roald Dahl s books and recognise the importance of keeping Dahl s classic texts in print 213 214 FilmographyWriting roles Year Title Role Notes1950 Suspense Story 1 episode1952 CBS Television WorkshopLux Video Theatre1954 Philip Morris PlayhouseDanger1955 Star TonightCameo Theatre1958 Suspicion1958 61 Alfred Hitchcock Presents 7 episodes1961 Way Out 1 episode1962 That Was the Week That Was1964 36 Hours Feature film1965 67 Thirty Minute Theatre 3 episodes1967 You Only Live Twice Screenplay Feature film1968 Late Night Horror Writer 1 episodeChitty Chitty Bang Bang Screenplay Feature filmJackanory 10 episodes1971 The Road Builder Feature filmWilly Wonka amp the Chocolate Factory Story screenplay1979 88 Tales of the Unexpected Writer story 26 episodes1985 The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents Story 1 episode1989 The BFG Feature filmThe Book Tower Writer 1 episodeDanny the Champion of the World Story TV moviePresenting roles Year Title Role Notes1961 Way Out Host 5 episodes1965 Thirty Minute Theatre Narrator 1 episodeNon presenting appearances Year Title Role Notes1969 The 41st Annual Academy Awards Himself Audience member1978 Read All About It 1 episodeThis Is Your Life 1 episode1979 85 Tales of the Unexpected 32 episodes1989 Going Live 1 episodePublicationsMain articles Roald Dahl bibliography and Roald Dahl short stories bibliographyNotes Norwegian ˈruːɑɫ ˈdɑːɫ 215 216 commonly pronounced in English as ˈ r oʊ e l d ˈ d ɑː l ROH eld DAHL 217 References Roald Dahl British author Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved 2 March 2022 Sturrock 2010 p 19 a b Penguin to publish classic Roald Dahl books after censorship backlash www cbsnews com 24 February 2023 a b Nunis 2016 a b c d e f g h Once upon a time there was a man who liked to make up stories The Independent 12 December 2010 Retrieved 16 September 2014 a b c Roald Dahl centenary Tremendous things promised for 2016 BBC News BBC 6 July 2015 Retrieved 14 October 2015 a b Fans gather for Dahl celebration BBC 13 September 2006 Retrieved 16 September 2014 a b The 50 greatest British writers since 1945 The Times 5 January 2008 Retrieved 16 September 2014 Freeman Abigail 30 October 2021 The Highest Paid Dead Celebrities 2021 Forbes Retrieved 10 July 2022 a b c Britain celebrates first Roald Dahl Day today com NBC News Associated Press 13 September 2006 Archived from the original on 2 December 2011 Retrieved 16 September 2014 Criado 2014 a b Hamlin 2015 a b de Castella 2011 Berntsen Erik 21 October 2020 Harald Dahl b 1863 Sarpsborg Ostfold d 1920 Wales Erik Berntsens slektssider Erik Berntsens slektssider Retrieved 21 October 2020 Howard 2017 a b Roald Dahl Timeline Roald Dahl Facts Roald Dahl Facts Retrieved 14 March 2019 Palfrey 2006 p 76 Dahl Roald 1999 Min mor I Roald Dahls kjokken Oslo Gyldendal Norsk Forlag p 65 ISBN 8205256136 Blue plaque marks Dahl sweet shop BBC Retrieved 24 December 2014 a b Roald Dahl Biography BBC Wales 2 February 2010 Retrieved 23 September 2020 UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from Clark Gregory 2017 The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain 1209 to Present New Series MeasuringWorth Retrieved 11 June 2022 Dahl Harald probatesearchservice gov UK Government 1920 Retrieved 25 September 2021 Bratberg Oivind 2016 Utvandrere Roald Dahl Grensesprengeren Oslo Dreyer p 23 ISBN 9788282651806 Wheeler 2006 p 9 First look at Roald amp Beatrix starring Dawn French with special cameo from Bill Bailey 17 November 2020 Radio Times Archived from the original on 20 December 2020 Retrieved 6 October 2022 Peter Rabbit blazed a trail still well trod The Times Retrieved 6 October 2022 When is Roald and Beatrix The Tail of the Curious Mouse on TV 30 November 2020 Radio Times Archived from the original on 21 December 2020 Retrieved 6 October 2022 a b Roald amp Beatrix is a slow burning yet heart warming Christmas tonic for fans of all ages 24 December 2020 Radio Times Archived from the original on 24 December 2020 Retrieved 6 October 2022 Sharp 2005 p 516 Matilda by Roald Dahl Quentin Blake s sketches and original artwork British Library Retrieved 8 October 2022 Dahl s childhood sweetshop and its influence on his books BBC News 13 September 2016 Retrieved 8 October 2022 Ayto 2012 p 154 Roald Dahl s School Days BBC Wales Retrieved 24 January 2010 Readers Donald Sturrock and Rory Kinnear Abridged by Katrin Williams Producer Duncan Minshull 5 June 2016 Book of the Week Love from Boy Roald Dahl s Letters to His Mother Book of the Week BBC Radio Dahl 2013a pp 85 161 Sturrock Donald 8 August 2010 Roald Dahl s schooldays were filled with the ritual cruelty of fagging for older boys and with terrible beatings The Daily Telegraph Archived from the original on 10 January 2022 Retrieved 16 May 2016 WEB LINKS corporal punishment in British schools www corpun com Retrieved 26 May 2016 Boarding School Magic Los Angeles Review of Books Retrieved 6 July 2018 Treglown 2016 Ch 2 note 28 Dahl 2013a p 178 Liukkonen Petri Roald Dahl Books and Writers kirjasto sci fi Finland Kuusankoski Public Library Archived from the original on 10 February 2015 Roald Dahl Penguin UK Authors Archived 1 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine Penguin UK Shavick 1997 p 12 Repton School helped inspire Dahl to write Charlie BBC 14 July 2015 Roald Dahl derivative work and Quentin Blake 2005 Roald Dahl s Incredible Chocolate Box ISBN 978 0 14 131959 9 Dahl 2013a pp 156 158 Dahl 2013a pp 80 82 Dahl 2013a p 213 Sturrock 2010 pp 93 94 Roald Dahl British author Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved 16 September 2014 a b Dahl 2013a p 217 Dahl 2013b p 23 Sturrock 2010 p 116 a b No 34964 The London Gazette 8 October 1940 p 5907 Sturrock 2010 p 120 a b c Conant 2008 p 3 Sturrock Donald 9 August 2010 Roald Dahl the plane crash that gave birth to a writer The Daily Telegraph Archived from the original on 10 January 2022 Retrieved 16 September 2014 a b Warren 1988 pp 12 87 Dahl 2013b p 103 Thomas 2003 p 36 Dahl 2013b p 151 Dahl Roald Going Solo London Jonathan Cape 1986 p 193 Dahl Going Solo Roald Dahl The fighter pilot Roald Dahl com Archived from the original on 25 October 2019 Retrieved 21 January 2020 No 35292 The London Gazette 30 September 1941 p 5664 Sturrock 2010 p 163 Sturrock 2010 p 165 Sturrock 2010 pp 163 165 Sturrock 2010 pp 166 167 Sturrock 2010 p 167 Dahl 2013b a b Dietsch Deborah K 1 December 2013 Roald Dahl Slept Here From attache to author The Washington Post Magazine p 10 Retrieved 30 November 2013 Head 2006 p 269 a b c d The Marvellous World of Roald Dahl BBC Studios 2016 No 35791 The London Gazette Supplement 17 November 1942 p 5037 Schoeck 2006 p 221 MacDonald 2001 p 249 MacDonald 2001 p 243 No 37681 The London Gazette Supplement 9 August 1946 p 4054 Shores amp Williams 2008 p 206 Martin Chilton 18 November 2010 The 25 best children s books The Daily Telegraph Dad also needed happy dreams Roald Dahl his daughters and the BFG The Daily Telegraph 6 August 2010 Archived from the original on 10 January 2022 Retrieved 16 September 2014 Water on the Brain MedGadget Internet Journal of Emerging Medical Technologies 15 July 2005 Archived from the original on 22 May 2006 Retrieved 11 May 2006 Larner 2008 p 22 a b Roald Dahl on the death of his daughter The Telegraph No 3 February 2015 Singh Anita 7 August 2010 Roald Dahl s secret notebook reveals heartbreak over daughter s death The Daily Telegraph Retrieved 4 January 2011 Gonzalez Robbie 31 January 2015 Read Roald Dahl s Powerful Pro Vaccination Letter Retrieved 1 February 2015 a b c Roald Dahl on God The day I lost faith in the Boss The Telegraph No 6 August 2010 Archived from the original on 10 January 2022 Farrell 1971 David Thomson 9 August 2010 Patricia Neal a beauty that cut like a knife The Guardian Retrieved 16 September 2014 a b McCarthy James 12 November 2008 We thought we could keep our affair secret says Roald Dahl s second wife walesonline Retrieved 16 May 2019 1980s Roald Dahl www roalddahl com Archived from the original on 26 September 2019 Retrieved 23 April 2020 Day Elizabeth 9 November 2008 My years with Roald Felicity Dahl talks to Elizabeth Day The Observer ISSN 0029 7712 Retrieved 16 May 2019 Pearson 2004 p 16 Queen s honours refused Retrieved 16 September 2014 Roald Dahl among hundreds who turned down Queen s honours Archived 29 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine Walesonline also published in the Western Mail 27 January 2012 Retrieved 27 January 2012 The New Elizabethans Roald Dahl BBC Retrieved 8 August 2016 Roald Dahl to be posthumously honoured with a Gold Blue Peter badge BBC Retrieved 17 May 2019 Ruffin 2006 p 17 a b Donald 2008 p 147 Sasser 1971 p 1094 Solomon 2016 p 69 Tanner Nick 20 December 2006 Dahl s Gremlins fly again thanks to historian s campaign The Guardian Retrieved 16 September 2014 a b Maunder 2007 p 96 Roald Dahl Day From Tales of the Unexpected to Switch Bitch Dahl s undervalued stories for adults The Independent 6 October 2017 a b Mottram 2006 p 95 Hitchcock on TV his 10 best episodes British Film Institute Retrieved 17 October 2022 English Gypsy caravan Gypsy Wagon Gypsy Waggon and Vardo Photograph Gallery 1 Gypsywaggons co uk Archived from the original on 31 January 2011 Retrieved 28 January 2011 Dahl 2010 p 13 sfn error no target CITEREFDahl2010 help Matilda statue stands up to President Donald Trump BBC Retrieved 1 October 2018 a b c Maunder 2007 p 417 Tales of the Unexpected 1979 88 Retrieved 16 September 2014 Wes Anderson to Direct Roald Dahl s Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar for Netflix with Benedict Cumberbatch IndieWire 7 January 2022 Retrieved 4 November 2022 a b Schweitzer 1985 p 125 a b Sally Williams 12 September 2006 A plateful of Dahl The Daily Telegraph Retrieved 4 January 2011 Books magazine Volumes 5 7 Publishing News Ltd 1991 p 35 Retrieved 16 September 2014 a b c Why we love the mischievous spirit of Roald Dahl The Telegraph Archived from the original on 10 January 2022 Retrieved 31 August 2019 McCall 2013 p 166 Esio Trot review Dench sparkles Hoffman is perfect The Guardian Retrieved 31 August 2019 Fantastic Mr Fox movie review Wes Anderson joyfully re creates Roald Dahl s foxy family The Star Ledger 21 January 2016 Marlow 2009 p 46 Volvovski Rothman amp Lamothe 2014 p 28 Roald Dahl s daughter on when The BFG was a bedtime story www cbsnews com a b c d Dahl s squishous words get their own dictionary BBC 28 May 2016 Roald Dahl s Revolting Rule Book TV Movie 2007 IMDb 22 September 2007 AV guide Volumes 77 82 Scranton Gillette Communications 1998 Retrieved 16 September 2014 Collin Robbie 18 February 2021 Sean Connery He never stood anyone a round Roald Dahl s love hate relationship with Hollywood The Daily Telegraph Archived from the original on 10 January 2022 Retrieved 28 February 2021 Roald Dahl Day my glimpse into the great writer s imagination The Guardian Retrieved 22 November 2014 Liz Buckingham trustee for the Roald Dahl Museum quoted in Tom Bishop Willy Wonka s Everlasting Film Plot BBC News July 2005 Tom Bishop July 2005 Willy Wonka s Everlasting Film Plot BBC News Craats 2014 p 1957 a b World Book Day 2019 Roald Dahl s 10 best children s books from Matilda to The Twits The Independent Retrieved 4 November 2019 How Dylan Thomas s writing shed inspired Roald Dahl BBC 18 September 2016 Roald Dahl young tales of the unexpected The Daily Telegraph 30 August 2008 Archived from the original on 10 January 2022 Retrieved 16 September 2014 Roald Dahl Archived from the original on 5 December 2014 Retrieved 16 September 2014 Mother Sofie Dahl influence upon Roald Dahl Archived from the original on 5 December 2014 Retrieved 16 September 2014 Way Out TV Series 1961 IMDb 8 January 2005 Retrieved 16 September 2014 The Paley Center for Media Way Out The Paley Center for Media Retrieved 16 September 2014 McCann 2006 p 156 BFI Film and TV Database Tales of the Unexpected BFI Archived from the original on 15 January 2009 Retrieved 16 September 2014 Terrace 1985 p 406 Deaths England and Wales 1984 2006 Findmypast com Archived from the original on 28 February 2009 Retrieved 28 January 2011 A giant peach of a property in Dahl country The Times 14 July 2015 McElmeel 1999 p 114 Schmadel 2003 p 519 MPC MPO MPS Archive Minor Planet Center Retrieved 7 July 2016 Roald Dahl and the Chinese chip shop walesonline 27 March 2009 Retrieved 16 September 2014 Roald Dahl s Marvellous Children s Charity Marvellouschildrenscharity org Retrieved 28 January 2011 Clarie Heald 11 June 2005 Chocolate doors thrown open to Dahl BBC News Roald Dahl won children s hearts by co conspiring against adults Deutsche Welle 16 July 2015 David Walliams up for Roald Dahl award BBC News 17 September 2010 Retrieved 16 September 2014 The Roald Dahl Funny Prize booktrust org uk Retrieved 28 April 2013 a b South East Wales Blue plaque marks Dahl sweet shop BBC News 14 September 2009 Retrieved 25 October 2011 Roald Dahl plaque for Weston super Mud BBC News 21 March 2018 Retrieved 7 March 2019 Flood Alison 13 September 2010 Roald Dahl Day expands into full month of special treats The Guardian Retrieved 16 September 2014 Roald Dahl Day celebrations Roald Dahl Museum roalddahlmuseum org Archived from the original on 8 September 2009 Retrieved 16 September 2014 Roald Dahl s 90th Birthday Random House UK Retrieved 20 September 2007 Archived 5 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine UK world s best selling children author on Gibraltar stamps World Stamp News worldstampnews com 15 May 2010 Archived from the original on 18 July 2011 Retrieved 28 January 2011 Flood Alison 9 January 2012 Roald Dahl stamps honour classic children s author The Guardian Retrieved 9 January 2012 Quentin Blake s famous illustrations of The Twits Matilda and Fantastic Mr Fox all feature on a new series of stamps from the Royal Mail issued to celebrate the work of Roald Dahl Out from tomorrow the stamps also show James and the Giant Peach and The Witches while a triumphant Charlie Bucket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is brandishing a golden ticket on the new first class stamp Burton 2006 p 223 10 celebrities have picked their favourite Roald Dahl book ready for a public vote Wales Online 6 September 2016 Holt Karen as told to Books That Made a Difference to Scarlett Johansson Oprah com Retrieved 16 September 2014 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link Oxford University Press to capture Roald Dahl s naughtiest language for the first time Cardiff times 7 March 2019 Retrieved 3 October 2020 Dahl beats all competitors to collect honour as nation s favourite author thegurdian 10 March 2000 Retrieved 5 October 2020 The Big Read Top 100 Books BBC Retrieved 16 September 2014 First of two pages Archived 2 September 2014 by the publisher Charles Dickens and Terry Pratchett led with five of the Top 100 The four extant Harry Potter novels all made the Top 25 The Dahl novels were Charlie The BFG Matilda and The Twits Roald Dahl voted best author in primary teachers survey BBC 30 March 2012 Retrieved 16 July 2015 In this survey of primary school teachers Dahl also placed five books in the top ten Charlie The Twits Danny the Champion of the World The BFG and George s Marvellous Medicine Brown Kat 2 March 2015 Survey reveals 50 books that every child should read by 16 The Daily Telegraph Retrieved 16 July 2015 Roald Dahl is still king of children s literature according to a survey for World Book Day Higgins Charlotte 31 January 2006 From Beatrix Potter to Ulysses what the top writers say every child should read The Guardian Retrieved 16 September 2014 Sally Blakeney 1998 The Golden Fairytale The Australian Retrieved 10 October 2022 John Shirley 2001 Review Harry Potter and the Sorcerer s Stone LocusOnline Retrieved 10 October 2022 Bird Elizabeth 7 July 2012 Top 100 Chapter Book Poll Results A Fuse 8 Production Blog School Library Journal blog schoollibraryjournal com Archived from the original on 13 July 2012 Retrieved 29 October 2015 100 Best Young Adult Books Time Retrieved 29 October 2019 Matilda Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Danny the Champion of the World New data annual public library loans figure revealed the UK s most borrowed e books for the first time infodocket 20 May 2020 Retrieved 3 October 2020 James Patterson remains UK libraries most borrowed author for 11th year The Guardian 27 July 2018 Retrieved 3 October 2020 Britain s top ten children s literature superstars The Independent Retrieved 1 September 2017 New faces on Sgt Pepper album cover for artist Peter Blake s 80th birthday The Guardian 5 October 2016 Sir Peter Blake s new Beatles Sgt Pepper s album cover BBC News 9 November 2016 Phillips Catherine Top ten best selling Roald Dahl books revealed Worcester News Retrieved 1 October 2020 Banksy and Yate born JK Rowling make list of 50 greatest storytellers of all time Bristol Post Retrieved 1 September 2017 Norwegian Dreamliner takes off with new Jane Austen adorned tail fin for first time Daily Mirror Retrieved 14 September 2018 Caswell Mark Freddie Mercury unveiled as Norwegian s latest tail fin hero Business Traveller com Retrieved 14 September 2018 Amy Poulter 23 September 2021 Netflix purchases Roald Dahl rights for 686 million Yahoo Finance Retrieved 10 October 2021 Bergeson Samantha 15 June 2022 Matilda Trailer Emma Thompson Is Unrecognizable as Monstrous Miss Trunchbull in Roald Dahl Musical IndieWire Retrieved 14 October 2022 Clifton amp Leroy 1983 Dahl Roald August 1983 Not A Chivalrous Affair Literary Review Retrieved 17 February 2020 subscription required a b c Johnson Paul 3 September 1983 An affront to decency The Spectator p 15 Retrieved 17 February 2020 Hulbert Ann 1 May 1994 Roald the Rotten The New York Times Retrieved 17 February 2020 a b Treglown 2016 Ch 14 note 39 Sheinman Anna 15 September 2011 Roald Dahl Proudly antisemitic The Jewish Chronicle Retrieved 9 December 2020 Treglown 2016 p 185 Ch 14 note 39 Coren Michael 26 August 1983 From the NS archive Tale of the unexpected 26 August 1983 Roald Dahl continues to voice his anti Semitism New Statesman Retrieved 8 October 2021 a b Sherwood Harriet 6 December 2020 Roald Dahl s family apologises for his antisemitism The Observer Retrieved 8 December 2020 a b Murphy Simon 6 November 2018 Royal Mint rejected Roald Dahl coin over antisemitic views The Guardian Retrieved 7 November 2018 Kossoff Julian 15 September 2011 The dark side of Roald Dahl The Jewish Chronicle Retrieved 9 December 2020 a b Kerridge Jake 7 November 2018 The dark truth about Roald Dahl how anti Semitism tainted his work The Daily Telegraph Archived from the original on 10 January 2022 Retrieved 17 February 2020 Das Roald Dahl Museum in Great Missenden dradio in German 16 November 2008 a b Schwarts Matthew S 6 December 2020 Roald Dahl Family Apologizes For Children s Author s Anti Semitism NPR National Public Radio npr Archived from the original on 8 December 2020 The article on the npr org web site see the previous footnote includes the comment on the official Dahl website Archived 11 January 2022 at the Wayback Machine and a 6 December 2020 report in The Sunday Times Cameron Eleanor 19 October 1972 McLuhan Youth and Literature Part I The Horn Book Retrieved 14 October 2020 Dahl Roald 27 February 1973 The Horn Book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory A Reply The Horn Book Retrieved 14 October 2020 Cameron Eleanor 19 April 1973 A Reply to Roald Dahl The Horn Book Retrieved 14 October 2020 Eleanor Cameron vs Roald Dahl Roald Dahl Fans Retrieved 14 October 2020 a b Dirda Michael 7 December 1990 Opinion Roald Dahl Also Left a Legacy of Bigotry Published 1990 The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved 14 October 2020 Think Twice about Roald Dahl Lilith Magazine 27 September 1998 Retrieved 14 October 2020 Mullally Una Women as written by Roald Dahl The Irish Times Retrieved 14 October 2020 The rewriting of Roald Dahl The Telegraph 24 February 2023 Roy Nilanjana 24 February 2023 The case against rewriting Roald Dahl Financial Times Dellatto Marisa 20 February 2023 Roald Dahl Books Get New Edits And Critics Cry Censorship The Controversy Surrounding Charlie And The Chocolate Factory And More Forbes Zymeri Jeff 21 February 2023 Salman Rushdie Blasts Absurd Censorship of Roald Dahl National Review Honeycombe Foster Matt Blanchard Jack 21 February 2023 UK s Badenoch slams problematic rewrites of classic Roald Dahl books Politico eu Roald Dahl rewrites edited language in books criticised as absurd censorship The Guardian 20 February 2023 Retrieved 25 February 2023 Sawer Patrick 25 February 2023 Roald Dahl warned politically correct publishers change one word and deal with my crocodile The Telegraph Alberge Dalya 25 February 2023 Roald Dahl threatened publisher with enormous crocodile if they changed his words The Guardian Jackson Siba Roald Dahl classic texts to be kept in print after outrage over changes to books Sky News Retrieved 24 February 2023 Rackham Annabel 24 February 2023 Roald Dahl Original books to be kept in print following criticism BBC News Lloyd Brian 17 November 2016 You ve been pronouncing Roald Dahl s name wrong for years Entertainment ie Retrieved 11 January 2020 White Bethany 18 November 2016 We ve all been pronouncing Roald Dahl s name wrong for years walesonline Retrieved 11 January 2020 NLS Say How A D Library of Congress Retrieved 25 April 2017 Sources Ayto John 2012 The Diner s Dictionary Word Origins of Food and Drink Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 964024 9 Burton Tim 2006 Mark Salisbury ed Burton on Burton 2nd Revised ed Farrar Straus and Giroux ISBN 978 0 571 22926 0 Clifton Tony Leroy Catherine 1983 God Cried Quartet ISBN 978 0 7043 2375 9 Conant Jennet 2008 The Irregulars Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington Simon and Schuster ISBN 978 1 4165 8032 4 Craats Rennay 2014 Roald Dahl WEIGL ISBN 978 1 4896 0676 1 Criado Elisa 29 August 2014 Aldi removes Roald Dahl book from Australian stores The Independent Retrieved 23 September 2020 Dahl Roald 2013a 1984 Boy tales of childhood London Penguin Group ISBN 978 0 141 34986 2 OCLC 1193367039 Dahl Roald 2013b 1986 Going solo London Penguin Group ISBN 978 0 14 01 0306 9 OCLC 1035312298 de Castella Tom 12 September 2011 The darkness of Dahl BBC News Retrieved 23 September 2020 Donald Graeme 2008 Sticklers Sideburns amp Bikinis The Military Origins of Everyday Words and Phrases Bloomsbury USA ISBN 978 1 84603 300 1 Farrell Barry 1971 Pat and Roald Dell Publishing Hamlin Dominic 27 November 2015 Roald Dahl s greatest philosophical quotes ever The Guardian Retrieved 23 September 2020 Head Dominic ed 2006 The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 83179 6 Howard Philip 1 September 2017 Dahl Roald 1916 1990 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 39827 Subscription or UK public library membership required Larner Andrew 2008 Tales of the Unexpected Roald Dahl s Neurological Contributions PDF Advances in Clinical Neuroscience and Rehabilitation Vol 8 no 1 ISSN 1473 9348 S2CID 163529827 Archived from the original PDF on 12 March 2012 Retrieved 7 November 2008 McCall Douglas 2013 Monty Python A Chronology 1969 2012 2nd ed McFarland ISBN 9780786478118 MacDonald Bill 2001 The True Intrepid Sir William Stephenson and the Unknown Agents Raincoast Books ISBN 978 1 55192 418 2 Marlow Jean 2009 Audition Speeches for 6 16 Year Olds 50 audition pieces for actors and actresses Bloomsbury ISBN 978 1 4081 4107 6 Maunder Andrew 2007 The Facts on File Companion to the British Short Story Infobase ISBN 978 0 8160 7496 9 McElmeel Sharron L 1999 Roald Dahl 100 Most Popular Children s Authors Biographical Sketches and Bibliographies Libraries Unlimited ISBN 978 1 56308 646 5 Mottram James 2006 The Sundance kids how the mavericks took back Hollywood Macmillan ISBN 9780571222674 Nunis Vivienne 18 August 2016 Roald Dahl As popular and profitable as ever BBC World Service Retrieved 23 September 2020 Palfrey Colin 2006 Cardiff Soul An Underground Guide to the City Y Lolfa ISBN 978 0 86243 909 5 Pearson Lynn F 2004 Discovering Famous Graves Bloomsbury USA ISBN 978 0 7478 0619 6 permanent dead link Ruffin Frances E 2006 Meet Roald Dahl Rosen ISBN 978 1 4042 3134 4 Sasser Sanford Jr ed 1971 The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aviation and Space Vol 6 A F E Press Schmadel Lutz 2003 6223 Dahl Dictionary of Minor Planet Names Springer p 519 doi 10 1007 978 3 540 29925 7 5731 ISBN 978 3 540 00238 3 Schweitzer Darrell 1985 Discovering Modern Horror Fiction Wildside ISBN 978 1 58715 010 4 Sharp Michael D 2005 Popular Contemporary Writers Marshall Cavendish ISBN 978 0 7614 7601 6 Shavick Andrea 1997 Roald Dahl The Champion Storyteller Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 910440 6 Schoeck Ellen October 2006 I Was There A Century of Alumni Stories about the University of Alberta 1906 2006 University of Alberta ISBN 978 0 88864 464 0 Shores Christopher Williams Clive 2008 Aces High A Tribute to the Most Notable Fighter Pilots of the British and Commonwealth Forces of WWII Vol One Grub Street Publishing ISBN 978 1 898697 00 8 Solomon Tom 2016 Roald Dahl s Marvellous Medicine Liverpool University Press ISBN 9781781383469 Sturrock Donald 2010 Storyteller The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl Simon amp Schuster ISBN 978 1416550822 Terrace Vincent 1985 Encyclopedia of Television Series Pilots and Specials VNR AG ISBN 978 0 918432 61 2 Thomas Andrew 2003 Hurricane Aces 1941 45 Bloomsbury USA ISBN 978 1 84176 610 2 permanent dead link Treglown Jeremy 2016 1994 Roald Dahl A Biography Open Road Media ISBN 978 1 5040 3859 1 Volvovski Jenny Rothman Julia Lamothe Matt 2014 The Who the What and the When 65 Artists Illustrate the Secret Sidekicks of History Chronicle ISBN 978 1 4521 3723 0 Warren Alan 1988 Roald Dahl Starmont House ISBN 978 1 55742 013 8 Wheeler Jill C 2006 Roald Dahl ABDO ISBN 9781596797635 Further reading Jason Hook Roald Dahl The Storyteller Raintree 2004 Held Jacob M 2014 Roald Dahl and Philosophy A Little Nonsense Now and Then Rowman amp Littlefield Publishers ISBN 9781442222533 Jennifer Boothroyd 2007 Roald Dahl A Life of Imagination Lerner Publishing Group ISBN 9780822588269 Kelley True 2012 Who Was Roald Dahl Penguin Group US ISBN 9781101620823 External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to Roald Dahl Wikiquote has quotations related to Roald Dahl Official website Roald Dahl s darkest hour biography excerpt Roald Dahl at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database Roald Dahl at IMDb Works by Roald Dahl at Open Library Radio interview by NRK 1975 in Norwegian The Devious Bachelor Sunday Book Review of The Irregulars Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington by Jennet Conant The New York Times 17 October 2008 Profile of Patricia Neal 2011 on Voice of America VOAnews com with transcript Footage of one Whitbread Book Prize presentation by Dahl 1982 Portal Children s literature Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Roald Dahl amp oldid 1148623282, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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