Roald Dahl was born in Llandaff, Wales on September 1, 1916 (Howard, "My Roald Dahl Biography"). His mother, Sofie Hesselberg was the second wife of Harald Dahl. His first wife had died after giving birth to her second child. Sofie had four children, "a girl, another girl, a boy [Roald], and a third girl" (Boy, Dahl, 16). When Roald was 3, his oldest sister Asti died of appendicitis. His father died a month later from pneumonia. Since his father had left his mother with a wish that his children should be educated in English schools (which he believed to be the best in the world), his mother stayed in Wales, where they lived. She sent Roald to school at a local kindergarten called Elmtree House. After that, he went to Llandaff Cathedral school, where he had a great adventure with a candy shop and a dead mouse. As a result of that particular adventure, Roald had his first experience with an angry headmaster!
After his mother decided that Llandaff Cathedral was no longer suitable, she sent Roald to an English boarding school called St. Peter's, in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. Although he was originally very homesick, he soon adjusted to life at boarding school. He had several teachers and headmasters in those days who inspired later characters, like the Trunchbull in Matilda.
At the age of 13, Roald was sent to Repton, a public boarding school. There, he gained more experience with nasty headmasters. He also tells about receiving chocolate from Cadbury's to test. From this, he began to think about fiction.
"I used to picture a long white room like a laboratory with pots of chocolate and fudge and all sorts of other delicious fillings bubbling away on the stoves, while men and women in white coats moved between the bubbling pots, tasting and mixing and concocting their wonderful new inventions. I used to imagine myself working in one of these labs and suddenly I would come up with something so absolutely unbearably delicious that I would grab it in my hand and go rushing out of the lab and along the corridor and right into the office of the great Mr. Cadbury himself...It was lovely dreaming those dreams, and I have no doubt at all that, thirty-five years later, when I was looking for a plot for my second book for children, I remembered those little cardboard boxes and the newly-invented chocolates inside them, and I began to write a book called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (Boy, Dahl, 148-149).
While at Repton, Roald also discovered that he had a great interest for several sports. One of those sports was Eton-fives, which is a game similar to American handball. He also found that he enjoyed and excelled at Squash. He was honored as the captain of Fives and later a captain of Squash, in addition to being on the football team. He says that he was one of the only captains at the school to never become a prefect. He also discovered a love of photography and won an award during World War II when he flew with the RAF. He won a medal from the Egyptian Photographic Society for a picture of "one of the so-called Seven Wonders of the World" (Boy, Dahl, 165).
Roald's instructors did not feel he had much potential as a writer, and neither did he. In his book The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, he quotes some of his instructors on his writing:
"He seems incapable of marshalling his thoughts on paper...A persistent muddler. Vocabulary negligible, sentences mal-constructed. He reminds me of a camel...This boy is an indolent and illiterate member of the class" (187-188)
After graduation, Roald worked for the Shell company in East Africa. When World War II broke out, he joined the RAF and flew. He was shot down several times and later, drew on these experiences to write the short story "A Piece of Cake" and the children's story "Gremlins."
In January, 1942, Roald Dahl went to Washington to the British Embassy, where he was met by C.S. Forester. Forester wanted to write about one of his experiences in the war for The Saturday Evening Post. After attempting to narrate the story for Forester, Roald decided to just write down his story so that Forester could convert it to an actual story. The next day, when he handed it in, Forester wrote him a letter saying "You were meant to give me notes, not a finished story. I'm bowled over...the Post is asking if you will write more stories for them. I do hope you will. Did you know you were a writer?" (Henry Sugar, Dahl, 198-199) After that, he started writing more and more and eventually, by writing a story about Gremlins on the wings of RAF planes, he was inspired to start writing children's fiction.
After a long and amazing career, Roald Dahl died in 1990 of leukemia.
Since then, his amazing since of humour and constant wit has kept both children and adults entertained through his stories and books. Even his non-fiction or more serious adult literature shines with his spark of genius and his eloquent writing. While his books continue to maintain popularity on their own, many of them have been made into popular movies, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, and The BFG.
*Information on this page comes from Boy: Tales of Childhood and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More.
Becky Metz, April 2003.
