Roald Dahl
(1916–1990)
Best known as the author of such children’s classics as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and Matilda, Roald (pronounced "roo’ aal") Dahl was also an award-winning writer of novels, stories, and screenplays for adults.
Dahl was born in South Wales and had fond childhood memories of traveling to Norway with his family every summer to visit his grandparents. His father died of pneumonia when he was four, leaving four girls and two boys to be cared for. However, Dahl once wrote that there was always enough money for a private school education. Although he always felt most at home in Norway, Dahl attended school in England. A mischievous child with an abhorrence for rules, he often found himself at odds with his stern teachers and headmasters.
Not surprisingly, Dahl did not continue his formal education after graduating, opting instead to seek adventure in faraway lands. As an employee of the Shell Oil Company, he was shipped off to Africa to sell oil to mine owners and plantation managers. In 1939, he joined the Royal Air force and was soon serving as a fighter pilot in World War II. Shot down over Egypt, Dahl managed to crawl away from the wreckage of his plane just as the gas tanks exploded. After recovering from a fractured skull, he returned to his squadron in Greece and shot down four enemy planes before blackouts from his head injury forced him to retire from flying.
Dahl was transferred to Washington, D.C., and it was there that he met writer C. S. Forester. Forester encouraged Dahl to write down the fascinating stories he told Forester at lunch, and Dahl’s fiction for adults soon began appearing in popular American magazines. "Beware the Dog" was one of the stories collected in 1946 in his first publication entitled Over to You: Ten Stories of Flyers and Flying.
Dahl’s first story for children was The Gremlins, which told of tiny creatures who were responsible for the crashing of fighter planes and bombers. Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the American president, was delighted by the book and read it to her children. She invited Dahl to dinner, and he soon became friends with the Roosevelts. Dahl returned to writing for adults in the years that followed and was widely celebrated for his tales of mystery and horror with surprise endings. For a few months in 1961, he even appeared on weekly American television as the host of Way Out, a half-hour science-fiction anthology series.
He married the American movie star Patricia Neal in 1953 and they had five children. The bedtime stories he made up for his children encouraged Dahl to focus more attention on writing children’s stories.
Despite the tremendous popularity of Dahl’s books for children, some critics expressed strong reservations about the violent treatment that the abusive adults in these stories often received at the hands of vindictive children. To these critics, Dahl replied that the children who wrote to him enjoyed the fantasy of horrid events.
Many of Dahl’s stories for both children and adults have been successfully adapted for stage and screen including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Witches. "Beware of the Dog" served as the basis for the movie 36 Hours in 1961. Dahl's autobiography, Going Solo, was published in 1986, and the prolific author’s stories, memoirs, and even favorite recipes have continued to appear in print, even after his death.
