Roald Dahl

Introduction

Roald Dahl was a British poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter ace who wrote famous children's literature and short tales. Over 300 million copies of his novels have been sold globally.

Dahl was born in Wales to rich Norwegian immigrants and lived in England for the bulk of his life. During WWII, he served in the Royal Air Force (RAF). He became a fighter pilot, then an intelligence officer, eventually advancing to the post of acting wing commander. In the 1940s, he rose to notoriety as a writer with works for both children and adults, and he went on to become one of the world's best-selling authors.

Dahl's short stories are noted for their surprising endings, and his children's novels are known for their unsentimental, macabre, and frequently darkly comedic tone, with evil adult antagonists of the kid protagonists. His children's novels promote kindness and have an underlying pleasant tone.

Early Life

Childhood

Roald Dahl was born in Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales, in 1916 at Villa Marie, Fairwater Road, to Norwegians Harald Dahl and Sofie Magdalene Dahl. Dahl's father, a rich shipbroker and self-made man, had relocated from Sarpsborg, Norway, to the United Kingdom. In the 1880s, he moved to Cardiff with his first wife, the Frenchwoman Marie Beaurin-Gresser. Before she died in 1907, they had two children (Ellen Marguerite and Louis). Roald Dahl's mother came from a well-established Norwegian family of attorneys, state church priests, and rich merchants and land owners. When she married his father in 1911, she moved to the United Kingdom. Dahl was named after Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian Arctic adventurer. His first language was Norwegian, which he spoke with his parents and sisters Astri, Alfhild, and Else at home. The children were reared in the Church of Norway, Norway's Lutheran state church, and were baptized in the Norwegian Church, Cardiff. Ellen Wallace, his maternal grandmother, was the granddaughter of member of Parliament Georg Wallace and a descendent of an early 18th-century Scottish immigrant to Norway.

Dahl's sister Astri died of appendicitis at the age of seven in 1920, when Dahl was three years old, and his father died of pneumonia a few weeks later at the age of 57. Asta, his younger sister, was born later that year. Harald Dahl's estate was assessed for probate at £158,917 10s. 0d. (equal to £6,791,035 in 2021). Dahl's mother chose to stay in Wales rather than return to Norway to live with family because her husband wanted their children to attend English schools, which he thought to be the greatest in the world. Dahl met his idol, Beatrix Potter, creator of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which featured the mischievous Peter Rabbit, the first licensed fictional character, when he was six years old. Their encounter was portrayed in the television drama film Roald & Beatrix: The Curious Mouse in 2020.

Dahl began his education at The Cathedral School in Llandaff. He and four of his pals were caned by the headmaster when they were eight years old for placing a dead mouse in a jar of gobstoppers at the local candy store, which was run by a "mean and loathsome" old woman named Mrs Pratchett. The prank was dubbed the "Great Mouse Plot of 1924" by the five lads. Mrs Pratchett influenced Dahl's development of the nasty headmistress Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, and another trick, this time with Trunchbull's water jug, would also occur in the novel. Between the two World Wars, gobstoppers were a popular delicacy among British schoolboys. Dahl alludes to them in his fictitious Everlasting Gobstopper, which appeared in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Dahl was sent to Weston-super-Mare's St Peter's residential school. His parents had desired that he attend an English public school, and this proved to be the closest due to the daily boat service over the Bristol Channel. Dahl's stay at St Peter's was difficult; he was homesick and wrote to his mother every week, but he never expressed his dissatisfaction to her. After she died in 1967, he discovered that she had preserved all of his letters; they were broadcast in truncated form as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week in 2016 to commemorate his birth's centennial. In his autobiography Boy: Tales of Childhood, Dahl writes of his time at St Peter's. Conkers-a traditional autumnal children's pastime in the United Kingdom and Ireland played with horse chestnut tree seeds.

Repton School

From 1929 until 1934, Dahl attended Repton School in Derbyshire. When he was 13, he started at Repton School in Derbyshire. Dahl despised the hazing and described it as a place of ritual violence and status oppression, with smaller boys forced to serve as personal slaves for older guys and frequently subjected to severe beatings. Donald Sturrock, Dahl's biographer, detailed these terrible episodes in Dahl's childhood. Some of these darker experiences are expressed in Dahl's works, which are also distinguished by his disdain for violence and corporal punishment.

Headmaster Geoffrey Fisher violently caned a buddy named Michael, according to Dahl's autobiography, Boy: Tales of Childhood. Fisher went on to become Archbishop of Canterbury, and in 1953, he crowned Queen Elizabeth II. According to Dahl's biographer Jeremy Treglown, the caning occurred in May 1933, a year after Fisher left Repton; the headmaster was, in fact, J. T. Christie, Fisher's successor. According to Dahl, the encounter prompted him to "have doubts about religion and even God." He saw the caning's violence as the outcome of the headmaster's hostility toward children, an attitude Dahl subsequently attributed to the Grand High Witch in The Witches, who yells, "Children are rrreee-voting!"

Dahl was never seen to be a particularly gifted writer at school, with one of his English instructors remarking in his report, "I have never met anybody who so persistently writes words meaning the exact opposite of what is intended." He was extremely tall, standing at 6 feet 6 inches (1.98 m) as an adult. Dahl participated in sports such as cricket, football, and golf and was named captain of the squash team. In addition to a love of books, he acquired an interest in photography and frequently carried a camera with him.

Throughout his time at Repton, the Cadbury chocolate firm delivered boxes of new chocolates to the school to be examined by the students. Dahl envisioned producing a new chocolate bar that would gain Mr Cadbury's approval; this led him to create his third children's book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), as well as to mention chocolate in later children's novels.

Dahl spent most of his childhood and adolescence years in Norway with his mother's family. In Boy: Tales of Childhood, he talked of many wonderful recollections f. He had to get his adenoids removed by a doctor when he was about eight years old. Boy: Tales of Youth is about his youth and first employment selling kerosene in Midsomer Norton and adjacent villages in Somerset.

In August 1934, after finishing his education, Dahl crossed the Atlantic on the RMS Nova Scotia and trekked across Newfoundland with the Public Schools Exploring Society.

Dahl joined the Shell Petroleum Company in July 1934. Following two years of training in the United Kingdom, he was posted to Mombasa, Kenya, and later to Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania). Dahl says in his memoirs Going Solo that the Shell corporation in the region was run by just three young Englishmen, of which he was the youngest and junior. He lived in luxury at the Shell House outside Dar es Salaam with a cook and personal maids, along with the only two other Shell workers in the entire region. He met black mamba snakes and lions, among other species, while on jobs carrying oil to consumers across Tanganyika.

Fighter Pilot

As the Second World War approached in August 1939, the British started plans to collect up the hundreds of Germans residing in Dar-es-Salaam. Dahl was appointed lieutenant in the King's African Rifles, leading a platoon of Askari soldiers and indigenous troops serving in the colonial army.

Dahl enlisted in the Royal Air Force (RAF) in November 1939 as an aircraftman with service number 774022. After a 600-mile (970-kilometer) automobile ride from Dar es Salaam to Nairobi, he was approved for flying school alongside sixteen other men, just three of whom survived the war. Dahl went solo after seven hours and forty minutes of flying in a De Havilland Tiger Moth; he liked seeing the animals of Kenya throughout his flights. In Iraq, he underwent advanced aviation training at RAF Habbaniya, 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Baghdad. Dahl was commissioned as a pilot officer on August 24, 1940, after six months of training flying Hawker Harts, and was deemed fit to join a squadron and engage the enemy.

He was posted to No. 80 Squadron RAF, where he flew old Gloster Gladiators, the RAF's last biplane fighter aircraft. Dahl was startled to learn that he would not be receiving any specific training in aerial combat or Gladiator flight. Dahl was given the order on September 19, 1940, to fly his Gladiator in stages from Abu Sueir (near Ismailia, Egypt) to 80 Squadron's advanced airfield 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Mersa Matruh. He couldn't find the airfield on the final leg, and with fuel running low and darkness coming, he was forced to try a landing in the desert. The airplane crashed after the undercarriage collided with a rock. Dahl's skull was cracked, and his nose was shattered, briefly blinding him. He dragged himself away from the smoldering wreckage and passed out. In his first published essay, he wrote about the disaster.

Dahl was rescued and transferred to Mersa Matruh's first-aid station, where he recovered consciousness but not his sight. He was brought to the Royal Navy hospital in Alexandria by rail. There, he had an on-again, off-again relationship with a nurse named Mary Welland. An RAF investigation into the accident discovered that the location he had been directed to fly to was utterly incorrect, and he had instead been dispatched into the no-man's land between the Allied and Italian troops.

In February 1941, Dahl was released from the hospital and cleared to fly again. By this time, the 80th Squadron had been sent to the Greek campaign and was stationed at Eleusina, near Athens. Hawker Hurricanes were now available to the unit. Dahl flew a replacement Hurricane across the Mediterranean Sea in April 1941 with only seven hours of flight time. The RAF had just 18 combat aircraft in Greece at this point in the campaign: 14 Hurricanes and four Bristol Blenheim light bombers. On April 15, 1941, while flying alone above Chalcis, Dahl engaged in his first aerial battle. He shot down one of six Junkers Ju 88 bombers that were hitting ships. On April 16, he shot down another Ju 88 in another air fight.

Dahl took part in the Battle of Athens on April 20, 1941, with the highest-scoring British Commonwealth ace of World War II, Pat Pattle, and Dahl's buddy David Coke. Five of the twelve Hurricanes engaged were shot down, and four of its pilots were killed, including Pattle. Greek ground observers recorded 22 fallen German aircraft; however, due to the chaos of the aerial conflict, none of the pilots recognized which aircraft they had shot down. Dahl characterized it as "an endless blur of enemy fighters whizzing towards me from every side."

Dahl was evacuated to Egypt in May as the Germans advanced on Athens. His squadron was reconvened in Haifa for Operation Exporter. Dahl flew sorties every day for four weeks, downing a Vichy French Air Force Potez 63 on June 8 and another Ju 88 on June 15. Dahl recalls in detail in a biography an attack by him and his fellow Hurricane pilots on the Vichy-held Rayak airfield.

Despite this lighthearted report, Dahl also stated that Vichy forces eventually murdered four of his squadron's nine Hurricane pilots. When he began to get terrible headaches that led him to black out, he was invalided back to the United Kingdom, where he remained with his mother in Buckinghamshire. Dahl was merely a pilot officer on probation at the time. Still, in September 1941, he was simultaneously confirmed as a pilot officer and promoted to war substantive flying officer.

Diplomat, Writer, & Intelligence Officer

Dahl was sent to an RAF training camp in Uxbridge after being invalided home. He sought to regain enough health to become a teacher. While in London in late March 1942, he visited the Under-Secretary of State for Air, Major Harold Balfour, at his club. Balfour selected Dahl as assistant air attaché at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., after being impressed by his battle record and conversational skills. Balfour eventually convinced Dahl to accept, and he boarded the M.S. Batory from Glasgow a few days later. On April 14, he landed in Halifax, Canada, and then took a sleeper train to Montreal.

Coming from war-torn Britain, Dahl was astounded by the abundance of food and comforts available in North America. Dahl loved the ambiance of the United States capital when he arrived a week later. He shared a residence in Georgetown with another attaché at 1610 34th Street, N.W. Dahl, however, detested his new job after just ten days.

The British Air Mission, which was affiliated with the embassy, did not impress Dahl. He also required an audience with the envoy, Lord Halifax, with whom he occasionally played tennis. Dahl frequented the homes of Charles E. Marsh, a Texas publisher and oilman, at 2136 R Street, N.W., and the Marsh country estate in Virginia. Dahl's duties as assistant air attaché included helping to defuse the isolationist attitudes still held by many Americans by making pro-British lectures and recounting his combat duty; the U.S. having only entered the war in December, following the assault on Pearl Harbor.

Dahl met famed British author C. S. Forester at this period, who was also laboring to help the British war effort. Forester was a British Ministry of Information employee who wrote propaganda for the Allied cause, mostly for American consumption. Forester had been requested by the Saturday Evening Post to compose a narrative based on Dahl's flying experiences; Forester had asked Dahl to take down some RAF incidents so that he could mold them into a story. Forester chose to publish the novella precisely as Dahl had written it after reading what Dahl had supplied him. The piece was initially titled "A Piece of Cake," but the magazine altered it to "Shot Down Over Libya" to sound more dramatic; despite the fact that Dahl had not been shot down, it was published in the August 1, 1942 issue of the Post. In August 1942, Dahl was promoted to flying lieutenant (war-substantive). Later, he collaborated with other well-known British officers, such as Ian Fleming (who later produced the successful James Bond series) and David Ogilvy, to promote Britain's interests and message in the United States and resist the "America First" movement.

This book exposed Dahl to espionage and the exploits of Canadian spymaster William Stephenson, also known as "Intrepid." Dahl provided intelligence from Washington to Prime Minister Winston Churchill throughout the war. Dahl also provided intelligence to Stephenson and his outfit, British Security Coordination, which was affiliated with MI6. Dahl was previously deported to the United Kingdom by British Embassy personnel, allegedly for misbehavior. Stephenson soon returned him to Washington with a promotion to the rank of wing commander. Dahl authored some of the history of the secret organization around the conclusion of the war, and he and Stephenson remained friends for decades after the conflict.

Dahl was a temporary wing commander (substantive flight lieutenant) during the end of the war. He was declared unsuitable for further duty due to the severity of his injuries from the 1940 crash and was invalided out of the RAF in August 1946. He was discharged with the substantive rank of squadron leader. His five aerial victories, which qualified him as a flying ace, were substantiated by post-war study and cross-referenced with Axis records. He most likely had more successes than those on April 20, 1941, when he shot down 22 German planes.

Post-War Life

On July 2, 1953, Dahl married American actress Patricia Neal in Trinity Church in New York City. Their marriage lasted 30 years, and they produced five children: Olivia Twenty, Chantal Sophia "Tessa," who went on to become a novelist and the mother of the author, cookbook writer, and former model Sophie Dahl, Theo Matthew, Ophelia Magdalena, and Lucy Neal.

Four-month-old Theo was seriously injured when his baby carriage was hit by a taxicab in New York City on December 5, 1960. He suffered from hydrocephalus for a period. As a result, Dahl got involved in the creation of the "Wade-Dahl-Till" (or WDT) valve, a device designed to enhance the shunt used to treat the ailment. Dahl, hydraulic engineer Stanley Wade, and neurosurgeon Kenneth Till of London's Great Ormond Street Hospital collaborated to develop the valve, which has been used successfully on almost 3,000 children worldwide.

Olivia Dahl, Dahl's seven-year-old daughter, died of measles encephalitis in November 1962. Dahl felt horrible about not being able to do anything for her when she died. Dahl later became an advocate for vaccination, authoring "Measles: A Dangerous Illness" in reaction to measles epidemics in the U.K. in 1988 and dedicating his 1982 novel "The BFG" to his daughter. Dahl began to see Christianity as a fraud after Olivia's death and a visit with a Church official. In his time of grief, he sought spiritual counsel from Geoffrey Fisher, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. He was disappointed to learn that, while Olivia was in Paradise, her pet dog Rowley would never accompany her.

While pregnant with their fifth child, Lucy, Dahl's wife Patricia Neal suffered three ruptured brain aneurysms in 1965. Dahl oversaw her recovery over the following few months; Neal had to relearn how to talk and walk, but she was able to resume her acting career. Glenda Jackson and Dirk Bogarde portrayed this phase in their life in the 1981 film The Patricia Neal Story.

Roald Dahl was introduced to Felicity d'Abreu Crosland, the niece of Lt.-Col. Francis D'Abreu, who was married to Margaret Bowes Lyon, the Queen Mother's first cousin, in 1972, while Felicity was working as a set designer on a Maxim coffee advertisement with the author's then-wife, Patricia Neal. They began an 11-year relationship soon after meeting. Neal and Dahl separated in 1983, and Dahl married Felicity in Brixton Town Hall in South London. Felicity (nicknamed Liccy) quit her employment. She relocated to Gipsy House in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, which had been Dahl's home since 1954.

Dahl was offered an appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1986 New Year's Honours List but declined. He allegedly desired a knighthood so that his wife may be known as Lady Dahl. Dahl's most recent big interest in medical charity was with dyslexia. Dahl collaborated with the British Dyslexia Association's Awareness Campaign in 1990, the year the United Nations declared the International Literacy Year. Dahl wrote one of his final children's novels that year, The Vicar of Nibbleswicke, about a vicar who has a fake kind of dyslexia that leads him to pronounce words backward. Waterstones called the book "a comic tale in the best Dahl tradition of craziness," and Dahl donated the rights to the Dyslexia Institute in London.

Dahl was named to the list of The New Elizabethans in 2012 to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee. Dahl was recognized by a panel of seven academics, journalists, and historians as one of the persons in the United Kingdom "whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands and given the age its character." Dahl's daughter Lucy won the BBC's Blue Peter Gold badge in his honor in September 2016, the first time it has ever been given posthumously.

Writing

On August 1, 1942, Dahl's first published piece, "A Piece of Cake," was inspired by a visit with C. S. Forester. The Saturday Evening Post purchased the tale of his combat exploits for $1,000 (equivalent to $20,000 in 2023) and published it under the headline "Shot Down Over Libya."

His first children's book, The Gremlins, was released in 1943 and was about naughty tiny creatures from Royal Air Force mythology. The RAF pilots blamed the gremlins for all of the aircraft's issues. Gus, an RAF pilot like Dahl, joins forces with the gremlins to fight a shared foe, Hitler and the Nazis. Dahl gave a copy to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who read it to her grandchildren while at the British Embassy in Washington. Walt Disney commissioned the book for a film that was never completed. Dahl went on to write some of the most renowned children's novels of the twentieth century, such as George's Marvellous Medicine, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox, and The Twits.

Dahl also had a successful second career as a writer of macabre adult short tales that frequently combined comedy and innocence with unexpected plot twists. Dahl received three Edgar Awards for his writing, which was originally published for American publications such as Collier's, Ladies Home Journal, Harper's, Playboy, and The New Yorker. Kiss Kiss, which compiled Dahl's stories into anthologies, went on to become quite successful. Dahl authored around 60 short stories, which have appeared in a number of compilations, some of which were first released in book form after his death. His three Edgar Awards were for the collection Someone Like You in 1954, the tale "The Landlady" in 1959, and the episode of Tales of the Unexpected based on "Skin" in 1980.

One of his more renowned adult stories, "The Smoker," also known as "Man from the South," was filmed twice as episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1960 and 1985, as a 1979 episode of Tales of the Unexpected, and as a portion of Quentin Tarantino's film Four Rooms (1995). This oft-anthologized classic is about a guy in Jamaica who wagers on visitors' fingers in order to claim them. Steve McQueen and Peter Lorre star in the original 1960 edition of Alfred Hitchcock's series. In the Hitchcock series, five more Dahl stories were included. Dahl was credited with writing the teleplay for two episodes. At the same time, four of them were directed by Alfred Hitchcock himself, including "Lamb to the Slaughter" (1958).

Dahl bought a typical Romanichal vardo in the 1960s and used it as a playhouse for his children in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire. He eventually utilized the vardo as a writing area, where he penned Danny, World Champion in 1975. Dahl used a similar caravan in the main storyline of the novel, where Danny, a little English boy, and his father, William, reside in a vardo. Many additional Great Missenden situations and personalities may be found in his work. The local library, for example, inspired Mrs Phelps' library in Matilda, where the title heroine devours classic literature by the age of four.

Tales of the Unexpected, a compilation of his short stories, was transformed into a popular T.V. series of the same name, beginning with "Man from the South." When Dahl's original stories ran out, the series continued by adapting stories created in Dahl's manner by other authors such as John Collier and Stanley Ellin. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, another collection of short stories, was released in 1977. The namesake short story was made into a short film in 2023 by filmmaker Wes Anderson, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular character Henry Sugar and Ralph Fiennes as Dahl.

Some of Dahl's short tales are purported to be excerpts from the diaries of his (fictitious) Uncle Oswald, a wealthy gentleman whose sexual adventures are the topic of these writings. In Dahl's novel My Uncle Oswald, the uncle hires a temptress to attract 20th-century intellectuals and aristocracy with a love potion hidden in chocolate truffles prepared by Prestat of Piccadilly, London. Memories with Food at Gipsy House, authored with his wife Felicity and released posthumously in 1991, was a collection of recipes, family reminiscences, and Dahl's reflections on topics as diverse as chocolate, onions, and claret.

The author's final novel, Esio Trot, published in January 1990, represented a shift in style for him. Unlike previous Dahl works, it tells the narrative of an elderly, lonely man attempting to connect with a woman he has admired from afar. Monty Python member Michael Palin recorded the English language audiobook version of the book in 1994. Roald Dahl's Esio Trot, a 2015 BBC television comedy film starring Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench, was adapted by screenwriter Richard Curtis.

Children's Fiction

Dahl's children's works are typically told from the perspective of a child, with adult villains who despise and mistreat children and at least one "good" adult to counteract the villain(s). These stock characters may be a reference to the abuse Dahl stated he experienced in the boarding schools he attended.

While his charming fantasy novels have a loving undercurrent, they are frequently combined with grotesque, darkly funny, and even cruelly violent scenes. This formula may be found in The Witches, George's Marvellous Medicine, and Matilda. The BFG follows, with the nice giant (the BFG or "Big Friendly Giant") symbolizing the archetype of the "good adult" and the other giants portraying the paradigm of the "bad adults." This formula may also be seen in Dahl's screenplay for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Class-conscious themes may also be found in films like Fantastic Mr. Fox and Danny, the Champion of the World, in which the obnoxious affluent neighbors are outwitted.

Dahl also includes characters that are quite overweight, generally youngsters. Some of these characters include Augustus Gloop, Bruce Bogtrotter, and Bruno Jenkins. However, in James and the Giant Peach, a gigantic woman named Aunt Sponge appears, and the evil farmer Boggis in Fantastic Mr Fox is an immensely overweight figure. With the probable exception of Bruce Bogtrotter, all of these characters are either villains or obnoxious gluttons. Augustus Gloop sips from Willy Wonka's chocolate river, ignoring the elders who urge him not to, and falls in, getting sucked up a pipe and nearly being converted into fudge. In Matilda, Bruce Bogtrotter steals cake from the cruel headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, and is forced to eat a massive chocolate cake in front of the entire school; when he succeeds, Trunchbull smashes the empty dish over his head. The witches (led by the Grand High Witch) entice Bruno Jenkins into their gathering with the promise of chocolate before turning him into a mouse in The Witches. A massive peach flattens Aunt Sponge. Dahl's mother used to tell him and his sister stories about trolls and other mythical Norwegian creatures when he was a boy. Some of his children's books, such as The BFG, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The Minpins, contain references or elements inspired by these stories.

Dahl, who received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1983, urged his children and readers to let their imaginations run wild. According to his daughter Lucy, her father subsequently informed her that if they said goodbye after a bedtime tale, he assumed it wasn't a good idea. But if they urged him to keep going, he knew he was onto something, and the narrative might occasionally become a book.

Dahl was also well-known for his innovative, fun use of language, which was an important part of his literature. He coined nearly 500 new words by penning them down, then exchanging letters and adopting spoonerisms and malapropisms. According to lexicographer Susan Rennie, Dahl based his new terms on recognizable sounds.

Roald Dahl's Revolting Rule Book, a U.K. television program hosted by Richard E. Grant and shown on September 22, 2007, marked Dahl's 90th birthday as well as his effect as a children's author in popular culture. It also included the eight fundamental guidelines he followed when writing children's novels.

In 2016, to commemorate Dahl's birth centennial, Rennie developed The Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary, which includes many of his coined terms and their definitions. Some of Dahl's phrases have already fled his realm, according to Rennie, such as Scrumdiddlyumptious: "Food that is utterly delicious." Dahl parodies well-known nursery rhymes and fairy tales in his poetry, presenting surprising endings in place of the typical happily-ever-after. Revolting Rhymes, Dahl's collection of poetry, is available as an audiobook narrated by actor Alan Cumming.

Screenplays

Dahl authored scripts for a short time in the 1960s. The James Bond flicks "You Only Live Twice" and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" were both based on Ian Fleming novels. Dahl also started adapting his novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was finished and revised by David Seltzer when Dahl missed deadlines and created the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971). Dahl later disavowed the picture, stating that he was "disappointed" because "he thought it placed too much emphasis on Willy Wonka and not enough on Charlie." He was also "infuriated" by the storyline changes developed by David Seltzer in his first draft of the screenplay.

As a result, he refused to have any other adaptations of the novel created during his lifetime, as well as an adaptation for the sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. He authored the screenplay for Death, Where is Thy Sting-a-ling-ling? which was never completed.

Influences

His youth heavily influenced Dahl's writing interests. He used to be an ardent reader, especially of spectacular tales of courage and triumph. When he was six years old, he met his idol, Beatrix Potter. Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, and former Royal Navy commander Frederick Marryat were among his other favorite authors, and their works had an indelible influence on his life and writing. Mr.Midshipman Easy by Marryat was his favorite novel. In The Independent, Joe Sommerlad says, "Dahl's novels are often dark affairs, filled with cruelty, grief, and Dickensian adults prone to gluttony and sadism."The author certainly felt compelled to warn his young readers about the ills of the world, drawing the lesson from earlier fairy stories that they could withstand unpleasant realities and would be stronger as a result of hearing them."

Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland also impacted Dahl. The "Drink Me" episode in Alice inspired a scenario in Dahl's George's Marvellous Medicine in which a despotic grandma drinks a potion and becomes the size of a farmhouse. Dahl, who had too many distractions in his house, remembered the poet Dylan Thomas, who had chosen a tranquil shed near to home to compose in. In the 1950s, Dahl visited Thomas's hut in Carmarthenshire, Wales, and after seeing inside, decided to create a copy of it to write in. Dahl referred to Thomas as "the greatest poet of our time" on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in October 1979. One of his eight chosen albums was Thomas's recitation of his poem "Fern Hill."

Dahl like ghost stories and considered Trolls by Jonas Lie to be one of the best written. At the same time, he was still a child; his mother, Sofie Dahl, told Dahl and his sisters classic Norwegian tales and stories from her region. Dahl always claimed that his mother and her stories influenced his work. Dahl incorporated a grandmother character in The Witches as an homage to his mother when he first started writing and publishing his popular novels for children.

Television

Dahl hosted and wrote for Way Out, a science fiction and horror television anthology series that aired on the CBS network for 14 episodes from March to July 1961. One of the last dramatic network shows to be shot in New York City, the complete series may be seen at The Paley Center for Media in both New York & Los Angeles. He also contributed to the satirical BBC comedy show That Was the Week That Was, presented by David Frost.

Tales of the Unexpected was a British television series that ran on ITV from 1979 until 1988. The series was produced to coincide with Dahl's collection of short stories of the same name, which exposed readers to several elements that appeared in his work. The series was an anthology of diverse stories based on Dahl's short stories at first. The stories were sometimes scary, sometimes cynically humorous, and always ended with a surprise. Dahl introduced all of the episodes of the first two seasons, titled Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected.

Legacy

Roald Dahl died on November 23, 1990, at the age of 74, of myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare blood cancer, in Oxford and was buried at the graveyard of the Church of St Peter and St Paul, Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, England. His granddaughter described his funeral as a "sort of Viking funeral." He was laid to rest with his snooker cues, a fine burgundy, chocolates, H.B. pencils, and a power saw. Children still leave toys and flowers at their graves nowadays.

The Roald Dahl Children's Gallery opened in November 1996 at the Buckinghamshire County Museum in nearby Aylesbury. In 1996, the main-belt asteroid 6223 Dahl was named in honor of Czech astronomer Antonin Mrkos, who found it.

The Oval Basin plaza, one of Cardiff Bay's new features, was renamed Roald Dahl Plass in 2002. Plass is Norwegian meaning "place" or "square," referring to the author's Norwegian ancestors. The public has also called for a permanent statue of him to be constructed in Cardiff. Dahl's birth centennial was commemorated in Llandaff in 2016. Welsh arts institutions, including National Theatre Wales, Wales Millennium Centre, and Literature Wales, collaborated on a series of activities commemorating Roald Dahl's 100th birthday, including a Cardiff-wide City of the Unexpected.

Dahl's charity contributions in the disciplines of neurology, hematology, and literacy during his lifetime have been carried on by his wife through Roald Dahl's Marvellous Children's Charity, formerly known as the Roald Dahl Foundation, following his death. The organization cares for and supports chronically sick children and young people across the U.K. Cherie Blair, wife of U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, formally launched the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in the author's home hamlet of Great Missenden in June 2005 to honor Roald Dahl's work and further his work in literacy education. Every year, about 50,000 foreign visitors, mostly from Australia, Japan, the United States, and Germany, visit the village museum.

The Roald Dahl Funny Prize, established in 2008 by the U.K. charity Booktrust and Children's Laureate Michael Rosen, is an annual prize given to authors of amusing children's fiction. The first blue plaque in Dahl's honor was unveiled in Llandaff on September 14, 2009 (the day after what would have been his 93rd birthday). However, rather than recognizing his birthplace, the plaque was built on the wall of the former sweet store (and site of "The Great Mouse Plot of 1924") that appears in the first section of his autobiography Boy. His widow Felicity and son Theo revealed it. In 2018, Weston-super-Mare, the place Dahl characterized as a "seedy seaside resort," erected a blue plaque dedicated to him on the grounds of St Peter's, the now-demolished boarding school Dahl attended. On September 13, the anniversary of Dahl's birth is observed as "Roald Dahl Day" in Africa, the United Kingdom, and Latin America.

In 2010, the Royal Gibraltar Post Office published a set of four stamps showcasing Quentin Blake's original drawings for four of Dahl's children's books: The BFG, The Twits, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Matilda. In 2012, the Royal Mail published a set of six commemorative stamps containing Blake's images for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, The Twits, Matilda, Fantastic Mr Fox, and James and the Giant Peach. Dahl's impact has surpassed literary figures. Dahl was selected as one of the 50 best British writers since 1945 by The Times, which described him as "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the twentieth century."He is one of the world's best-selling fiction authors, with over 300 million copies sold, and his novels have been translated into 63 languages. Dahl topped the poll of Britain's favorite authors in 2000. In 2003, four of Dahl's works, led by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at number 35, were among the Top 100 in The Big Read, a BBC poll of the British people to select the "nation's best-loved novel" of all time. Dahl is routinely voted the finest children's writer in polls of U.K. teachers, parents, and students. For Matilda, The BFG, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, he received the first three Australian BILBY Younger Readers Awards.

J. K. Rowling called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory one of her top 10 books every kid should read in a 2006 list for the Royal Society of Literature. The parallels between the Dursleys from Harry Potter and the horrific guardians featured in several of Dahl's stories, such as Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker from James and the Giant Peach, Grandma from George's Marvellous Medicine, and the Wormwoods from Matilda, have been noted by critics. Matilda was placed 30th among all-time top children's novels in a survey released in 2012 by School Library Journal, a monthly publication largely distributed in the United States. Dahl has four books in the Top 100, more than any other author. More than any other author, the American magazine Time included three Dahl works on its list of the 100 Best Young-Adult Works of All Time. Dahl is one of the most often borrowed authors from U.K. libraries.

Dahl was one of the British culture giants chosen by artist Peter Blake in 2012 to feature on a new version of his most famous artwork, the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover to honor the British cultural people he most admires. Dahl's lasting popularity was demonstrated in 2016 when he was named one of the top five best-selling children's writers on Amazon during the previous year, based on sales in print and the Kindle store. Dahl was declared the best storyteller of all time in a 2017 U.K. survey of the greatest authors, musicians, painters, and photographers, beating out Dickens, Shakespeare, Rowling, and Spielberg. In 2017, Norwegian Airlines announced that Dahl's picture would be featured on the tail fin of a Boeing 737-800 aircraft. He is one of six "British tail fin heroes," along with Queen vocalist Freddie Mercury, England World Cup champion Bobby Moore, author Jane Austen, pioneering pilot Amy Johnson, and aviation entrepreneur Freddie Laker.

Netflix paid more than £500 million ($686 million) for the Roald Dahl Story Company in September 2021. In December 2022, Netflix and Sony Pictures released a cinematic adaption of Matilda the Musical, starring Emma Thompson as Miss Trunchbull. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, the latest Dahl adaptation for Netflix, was published in September 2023, with director Wes Anderson indicating that he will also adapt three further Dahl short stories for Netflix.

Conclusion

Children's literature is just as important as other literary genres. It entertains children and beginning readers in general with its imaginative and funny content. Roald Dahl is a well-known author who has produced various literary works over his career. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is one of his most unforgettable works. The story has not just some fun but also an authentic depiction of working-class life. His works are popular with both children and adults. He has a unique writing style that is both amusing and fascinating.