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Roald Dahl (13 September 1916-23 November 1990) was a British author of popular children's literature and short stories, a poet, screenwriter and a wartime fighter ace.
His books have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. He has been called one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century.
Dahl was born in Wales to affluent Norwegian immigrant parents, and lived for 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.
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.
In 2021, Forbes ranked him the top-earning dead celebrity.
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.
His children's books champion the kindhearted and feature an underlying warm sentiment. 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.
Roald Dahl was born in 1916 at Villa Marie, Fairwater Road, in Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales, to Norwegians Harald Dahl and Sofie Magdalene Hesselberg.
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.
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.
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 and published under the title Shot Down Over Libya.
His first children's book was The Gremlins, published in 1943, about mischievous little creatures that were part of Royal Air Force folklore. The RAF pilots blamed the gremlins for all the problems with the aircraft. The protagonist Gus -an RAF pilot, like Dahl- joins forces with the gremlins against a common enemy, Hitler and the Nazis. While at the British Embassy in Washington, Dahl sent a copy to the First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who read it to her grandchildren,and the book was commissioned by Walt Disney for a film that was never made.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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). 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. 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).
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. 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. Another collection of short stories, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, was published in 1977, and the eponymous short story was adapted into a short film in 2023 by director Wes Anderson with Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular character Henry Sugar and Ralph Fiennes as Dahl.
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.
In 1994, the English language audiobook recording of the book was provided by Monty Python member Michael Palin. 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.
Written in 1990 and published posthumously in 1991, Roald Dahl's Guide to Railway Safety was one of the last things he ever wrote. In a response to rising levels of train-related fatalities involving children, the British Railways Board had asked Dahl to write the text of the booklet, and Quentin Blake to illustrate it, to help young people enjoy using the railways safely. The booklet is structured as a conversation with children, and it was distributed to primary school pupils in Britain.
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. His other favourite authors included Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray and former Royal Navy officer Frederick Marryat, and their works made a lasting mark on his life and writing.
Roald Dahl died on 23 November 1990, at the age of 74 of a rare cancer of the blood, myelodysplastic syndrome, in Oxford, and was buried in the cemetery at the Church of St Peter and St Paul, Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, England.
More information: Roald Dahl Fans
with people in it as opposed to animals,
it is no good having people who are ordinary,
because they are not going to interest your readers at all.
Every writer in the world has to use the characters
that have something interesting about them,
and this is even more true in children's books.
Roald Dahl
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