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A Rosier View of Roald Dahl

“Teller of the Unexpected,” an elegant new biography, sidesteps the ugly side of the children’s book author while capturing his grandiose, tragedy-specked life.

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By Alexandra Jacobs

ROALD DAHL, TELLER OF THE UNEXPECTED: A Biography, by Matthew Dennison

Many young readers who love the prodigious oeuvre of Roald Dahl can nonetheless cite at least one thing within it that gives them the ick. For me it was Mr. Twit’s beard in “ The Twits ” (1980), so ungroomed it might contain “a piece of maggoty green cheese or a mouldy old cornflake or even the slimy tail of a tinned sardine .” When millennial men in Brooklyn started growing big, bushy beards, my inner child dived under the table in horror.

The ickiest thing about the life of Dahl, who died in 1990 , was his well-documented antisemitism, capped by a 1983 comment about Jews to The New Statesman, in which he declared that “even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.” (That it’s custom for observant Jewish men to wear beards makes me even more uneasy about the demonized Mr. Twit.) The Dahl estate has posted an apology for his behavior on its website — linked discreetly under a Quentin Blake illustration of the author in a pink cardigan, looking beneficent and cuddly.

Looking back, there were plenty of other oh-no-he-didn’t moments in the literature. The Oompa-Loompas of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” were originally African pygmies — Dahl called the actors who played them wearing orange makeup and green wigs in the 1971 movie “dirty old dwarfs.” And a rapey 1965 story for Playboy, “Bitch,” transformed its adult male protagonist into a “ gigantic perpendicular penis, seven feet tall and as handsome as they come ,” as if James and his famous peach had grown up and gone horribly wrong.

But none of this is lingered on in Matthew Dennison’s elegant but somewhat glancing new biography of Dahl, subtitled “Teller of the Unexpected.” His subject has sold more books around the world than is possible to count. Netflix bought The Roald Dahl Story Co. in 2021 for a reported $1 billion ; “Matilda” alone is movie, musical and multiple memes. Roald Dahl — not mere author but high-yielding content farm — may simply be too big to cancel.

His own story has already inspired two major biographies, from which Dennison draws: one authorized, by Donald Sturrock , who also edited Dahl’s letters to his beloved mother , Sofie Magdalene; one not, by Jeremy Treglown . All of these accounts stand as necessary supplements to Dahl’s lyrical but selectively truthful autobiographical writing ; Dennison notes his tendency toward “mythomania.” He figured unfavorably in “As I Am,” the memoir by his first wife, the actress Patricia Neal, whom he nursed aggressively (some would say sadistically) back to health after a stroke and then left for their friend, Felicity “Liccy” Crosland; and in a roman à clef by their daughter, Tessa. The first Mr. and Mrs. Dahl were rendered in softer focus mourning the death from measles encephalitis of Tessa’s older sister, at only 7, in the recent movie “To Olivia.”

As Dennison reminds us, Roald — born in Wales, of Norwegian parentage — also lost a sister when she was 7, to appendicitis, and his father soon after. Backing into writing after a stint at the Asiatic Petroleum Company, his macabre voice and flights into fantasy were clearly engendered by brushes with death and violence.

He had been caned at boarding school and, enlisting in the Royal Air Force, was burned and maimed when his Gloster Gladiator plane crashed in the Egyptian desert. After his baby son Theo’s skull was crushed after a taxi hit his pram, Dahl developed a cerebral shunt with a pediatric neurosurgeon and toymaker, like the Wonka figure he was simultaneously creating on the page. Then came Neal’s medical crisis, while pregnant with their fifth child, Lucy, and her rehabilitation, reenacted in a memorable 1981 TV movie , in which she was played by Glenda Jackson, and Roald by Dirk Bogarde. (Exploring Dahl’s personal and professional entanglements, you’ll tumble down an IMDB hole deeper than the giants’ in “The BFG.”)

The author of previous books on Beatrix Potter and Kenneth Grahame, Dennison recaps most of these extraordinary events without fuss, riffling carefully through letters, diaries and other volumes, from the looks of his endnotes, but conducting no fresh interviews; there are no new revelations that I can discern, but instead refined interpretation. From the Dahl legacy, chocolate and bile and personality sloshing messily in all directions, he molds a digestive biscuit.

“Teller of the Unexpected” is maybe best capturing its 6-foot-5-plus subject as a swashbuckler: zooming around school grounds on a motorcycle or parachuting metaphorically into power centers like Washington, D.C., or Hollywood, where Dahl was courted by Walt Disney himself to develop a movie about gremlins — devilish creatures with horns and long tails blamed for R.A.F. mishaps. (Gremlins would go on to appear in plenty of movies, including a 1983 “Twilight Zone” sequence starring the Dahl look-alike John Lithgow , but this would not turn out to be one of the writer’s many lucrative franchises.) Encouraged early in his career by C.S. Forester and Hemingway, he was notoriously abrasive to his editors and had affairs with older and married women, complaining to a friend of Clare Boothe Luce’s voracious sexual appetite.

In Dennison’s telling, Dahl’s contradictions are beautifully illustrated but not particularly interrogated: He is here charitable but cruel; arrogant and desperate for acclaim; a self-declared man of action whose livelihood was language. He was an aesthete who cared deeply about his surroundings, early on collecting birds’ eggs in drawers lined with pink cotton wool and growing up to appreciate the finer things: painting, wine, the great composers. Long before it was fashionable, he made himself a man cave, a “writing hut” steps from his family cottage, whose name, Gipsy House, also offends 2023 ears.

And I think he would have liked Dennison’s writing style, lush but clipped, with such phrases as “the ubiquity of caprice” and “buoyant with slang,” full of a reader’s zest. This is not a potted biography, but it is a politely pruned one, idealism washing over the ick.

ROALD DAHL, TELLER OF THE UNEXPECTED: A Biography | By Matthew Dennison | 272 pp. | Illustrated | Pegasus Books | $27.95

Alexandra Jacobs is a book critic and the author of “Still Here: The Madcap, Nervy, Singular Life of Elaine Stritch.” More about Alexandra Jacobs

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Roald Dahl is as troubling as he is beloved. Can’t he be both?

The author of children’s favorites like ‘matilda’ was a complicated man. a new biography reminds us just how complicated..

In the brisk and concise “ Roald Dahl: Teller of the Unexpected ,” Matthew Dennison notes that the author of “ Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ,” “ The BFG ,” “ Matilda ” and much, much else has, according to the British journal the Bookseller, sold at least 250 million books in 58 languages.

That’s a phenomenal number, but just start almost any of Dahl’s books, then try to stop reading. I can testify to the tractor-beam power of his storytelling. After finishing Dennison’s biography, I decided to glance briefly at the opening chapters of “ The Witches ,” which I had reviewed, ecstatically, when it first appeared in 1983. When I finally lifted my eyes from the page, I was a quarter of the way through the novel, having been caught up all over again in its delicious scariness. Admittedly, “The Witches” remains my favorite among Dahl’s classics, closely followed by his 1988 paean to books and girl power, the wonderful “Matilda.” I didn’t reread it only because I had watched the exuberant — if overly dark — new film version instead. Like nearly all of Dahl’s best work, these two novels celebrate kindness, independent thought, daring, loyalty and self-reliance.

The disturbing Mr. Dahl

Without supplanting either Jeremy Treglown’s pioneering “ Roald Dahl: A Biography ” (1993) or Donald Sturrock’s authorized biography, “ Storyteller ” (2010) — both of which I recommend, especially the latter — this succinct new biography provides just enough information for all but the most ardent Dahl devotee. As in his previous lives of Beatrix Potter and Kenneth Grahame, Dennison again reminds us that children’s authors are, to say the least, complicated people. Dahl, for instance, could face horrific life-or-death crises with heroic self-control, knowing precisely what needed to be done and doing it. In more ordinary circumstances, however, his need to dominate and take command wasn’t much different from that of his own villain, the controlling, paramilitary sadist Miss Trunchbull.

Yet Dahl remains a troubling, complicated figure. Waspishly opinionated, frequently offensive, a hard bargainer with publishers and swaggeringly obnoxious with his editors, he could also be irresistibly charming, outrageously funny and, in his younger days, a relentless Casanova. In later years, he transformed himself into a family man who was distinctly “sparky,” his own word from “ Danny the Champion of the World ” for what a father should be. Once, while his daughters Olivia and Tessa slept, Dahl wrote their names in weed killer on the lawn outside their bedroom window. “The following morning, he told them it was the work of fairies.” Throughout his life, the writer also practiced, without fanfare, what Dennison describes as “habitual generosity.” To this day, the Dahl estate continues to support specialist pediatric nurses and to underwrite research into neurological and blood diseases.

Born in 1916, Roald Dahl — named after the polar explorer Roald Amundsen — was only 3 when his Norwegian-born father died, leaving a sizable fortune (from shipping and coal). At the prestigious Repton School, young Roald displayed no talent whatsoever for writing. One school report reads: “A persistent muddler. Vocabulary negligible, sentences malconstructed.” After graduation, rather than go on to university, he eagerly took up a job with Shell Oil in Africa, then later joined the Royal Air Force during World War II, flying combat missions over Greece.

Why read old books? A case for the classic, the unusual, the neglected.

Because of head injuries from a crash, the handsome 6-foot-6 flying ace was eventually redeployed to D.C. as a kind of British goodwill ambassador. There, besides doing a bit of intelligence work, he regularly bedded pretty girls and rich society matrons. But his “lucky break” — as he later titled an autobiographical essay — came about after meeting the novelist C.S. Forester. The creator of Captain Horatio Hornblower asked Dahl to write up his crash in the Libyan desert and was so impressed by the result that he sent the piece to the Saturday Evening Post, where it was published on Aug. 1, 1942. Other successful tales about wartime flying soon followed and were collected in 1946 as “ Over to You .” But Dahl’s first novel, 1948’s post-apocalyptic “ Some Time Never ,” proved a disaster, and his second never quite jelled, which isn’t surprising given its tentative title, “Fifty Thousand Frogskins.”

In his 30s, Dahl found his niche as a moderately successful author of sleek, unsettling suspense stories, which he later dubbed “ Tales of the Unexpected .” In “Lamb to the Slaughter,” a wife who has killed her husband ingeniously disposes of the highly original murder weapon. In “Taste,” a wine connoisseur stakes his 18-year-old daughter in a bet with a lecherous middle-aged rival over the identification of an obscure vintage of Bordeaux. Upon reading these elegant contes cruels, compiled in the 1953 collection “ Someone Like You ,” Noël Coward praised Dahl’s imagination as “fabulous” but also noted “an underlying streak of cruelty and macabre unpleasantness, and a curiously adolescent emphasis on sex.” These traits would characterize all his work for adults, including the stories of 1960’s “ Kiss, Kiss ” and the ribald exploits chronicled in 1979’s “ My Uncle Oswald .”

Until 1953, Dahl lived at home in England with his mother, to whom, as Dennison repeatedly emphasizes, he was close all his life. That year, though, he met and successfully wooed the American actress Patricia Neal. Their marriage, though rocky at first, lasted for 30 years, despite several terrible crises, including a traumatic brain injury to their infant son Theo and the death from measles of 7-year-old Olivia. When Neal suffered a debilitating stroke at just 39, Dahl personally oversaw an intense program of therapy and rehabilitation.

It was during these tumultuous years that he turned to writing for children. Dahl was 48 when his first masterpiece, “ James and the Giant Peach ,” appeared in 1961. Like his eerie adult stories of revenge and comeuppance, his children’s books required many drafts, scribbled longhand on yellow legal pads. He confessed that “when I first thought about writing the book ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,’ I never originally meant to have children in it at all.” On a rejected draft, Charlie was Black.

Roald Dahl was anti-Semitic. Do we need his family’s apology now?

In his mid-50s, Dahl began an extended affair with the 20-years-younger Felicity Crosland, a friend of Neal. After much angst all around and a bitter divorce, Crosland became his second wife. The marriage proved a happy one, leading to the great works of the 1980s: “The BFG,” “The Witches,” “Matilda” and the delightful, highly embroidered memoirs “ Boy ” and “ Going Solo .” When Dahl died of a rare blood cancer in 1990 at age 74, reprints of his books described him as the world’s No. 1 storyteller.

Reflecting on his work, Dahl once inventoried what children most enjoy in fiction: “They love being spooked. They love suspense. They love action. They love ghosts. They love the finding of treasure. They love chocolates and toys and money. They love magic.” Dahl’s books duly supply all these, as well as plenty of rowdy, Dickensian gusto and tall-tale exaggeration. What’s more, his stories don’t flinch from the rude body humor — flatulence, belching, smelly feet, mock vomiting — that children find so funny. Even the nastiness of Dahl’s villains is deliberately over the top so that the young hero or heroine’s ultimate triumph may be all the more satisfying to child readers. Above all, though, Dahl resolutely eschews overt moralizing: “There are very few messages in these books of mine. They are there simply to turn the child into a reader of books.”

Yet to adult eyes, Dahl frequently goes uncomfortably too far in depicting an anarchic Hobbesian world of savagery and violence. When “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” first appeared in 1964, the Oompa Loompas were racist caricatures of African pygmies (though later changed to hippie-ish, rosy-skinned dwarfs). The depiction of Veruca Salt’s father, in that same book, sails close to Jewish stereotypes. Not least, while Dahl defended his notorious “anti-Israeli” political views as justifiable anger over that nation’s treatment of the Palestinian people, many felt this argument was a cover for antisemitism.

Rudyard Kipling has been called the most controversial writer in modern English literature. Sometimes I suspect that Roald Dahl must run him a close second. Still, in the end, our dealings as readers aren’t with authors, all of whom are flawed human beings, but with their books. Our lives would certainly be poorer without Dahl’s tender portrait of the love between a father and his son in “Danny the Champion of the World” or the inspiring fairy tales of “The BFG” and “Matilda.” Even the critic Kathryn Hughes, who once called Dahl “an absolute sod,” concluded, quite rightly, that “despite so many reasons to dislike him,” he nonetheless remains “one of the greatest forces for good in children’s literature of the past 50 years.”

Teller of Unexpected Tales

By Matthew Dennison

Pegasus. 272 pp. $27.95

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Biography of Roald Dahl, British Novelist

The Memorable Author of Iconic Children's Novels

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Roald Dahl (September 13, 1916–November 23, 1990) was a British writer. After serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II , he became a world-famous author, particularly due to his best-selling books for children.

Fast Facts: Roald Dahl

• Known For:  English author of children's novels and adult short stories
• Born:  September 13, 1916 in Cardiff, Wales
• Parents:  Harald Dahl and Sofie Magdalene Dahl ( née  Hesselberg)
• Died:  November 23, 1990 in Oxford, England
• Education:  Repton School
• Selected Works:   James and the Giant Peach (1961), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), Fantastic Mr. Fox (1970), The BFG (1982), Matilda (1988)
• Spouses:  Patricia Neal (m. 1953-1983), Felicity Crosland (m. 1983)
• Children:  Olivia Twenty Dahl, Chantal Sophia "Tessa" Dahl, Theo Matthew Dahl, Ophelia Magdalena Dahl, Lucy Neal Dahl
• Notable Quote:  “Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.”

Dahl was born in Cardiff, Wales in 1916, in the district of Llandaff. His parents were Harald Dahl and Sofie Magdalene Dahl (née Hesselberg), both of whom were Norwegian immigrants. Harold had originally immigrated from Norway in the 1880s and lived in Cardiff with his French first wife, with whom he had two children (a daughter, Ellen, and a son, Louis) before her death in 1907. Sofie immigrated later and married Harold in 1911. They had five children, Roald and his four sisters Astri, Alfhild, Else, and Asta, all of whom they raised Lutheran. In 1920, Astri died suddenly of appendicitis, and Harold died of pneumonia only weeks later; Sofie was pregnant with Asta at the time. Instead of returning to her family in Norway, she stayed in the UK, wanting to follow her husband’s wishes to give their children an English education.

As a boy, Dahl was sent to an English public boarding school , St. Peter’s. He was intensely unhappy during his time there, but never let his mother know how he felt about it. In 1929, he moved to Repton School in Derbyshire, which he found equally unpleasant due to the culture of intense hazing and the cruelty with which older students dominated and bullied the younger ones; his hatred for corporal punishment stemmed from his school experiences. One of the cruel headmasters he loathed, Geoffrey Fisher, later became the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the association somewhat soured Dahl on religion.

Surprisingly, he was not noted as a particularly talented writer during his schoolboy days; in fact, many of his evaluations reflected precisely the opposite. He did enjoy literature, as well as sports and photography. Another of his iconic creations was sparked by his schooling experiences: the Cadbury chocolate company occasionally sent samples of new products to be tested by Repton students, and Dahl’s imagination of new chocolate creations would later turn into his famous Charlie and the Chocolate Factory . He graduated in 1934 and took a job with the Shell Petroleum Company; he was sent as an oil supplier to Kenya and Tanganyika (modern-day Tanzania).

World War II Pilot

In 1939, Dahl was first commissioned by the army to lead a platoon of indigenous troops as World War II broke out . Soon after, however, he switched to the Royal Air Force , despite having very little experience as a pilot, and underwent months of training before he was deemed fit for combat in the fall of 1940. His first mission, however, went badly awry. After being given instructions that later proved to be inaccurate, he wound up crashing in the Egyptian desert and suffering serious injuries that took him out of combat for several months. He did manage to return to combat in 1941. During this time, he had five aerial victories, which qualified him as a flying ace, but by September 1941, severe headaches and blackouts led to him being invalided home.

Dahl attempted to qualify as an RAF training officer, but instead wound up accepting the post of assistant air attaché at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. Although unimpressed and uninterested with his diplomatic posting, he became acquainted with C.S. Forester, a British novelist who was tasked with producing Allied propaganda for American audiences. Forester asked Dahl to write down some of his war experiences to be turned into a story, but when he received Dahl’s manuscript, he instead published it as Dahl had written it. He wound up working with other authors, including David Ogilvy and Ian Fleming, to help promote British war interests, and worked in espionage as well, at one point passing information from Washington to Winston Churchill himself.

The knack for children’s stories that would make Dahl famous first appeared during the war as well. In 1943, he published The Gremlins , turning an inside joke in the RAF (“gremlins” were to blame for any aircraft problems) into a popular story that counted Eleanor Roosevelt and Walt Disney among its fans. When the war ended, Dahl had held the rank of wing commander and squadron leader. Several years after the end of the war, in 1953, he married Patricia Neal, an American actress. They had five children: four daughters and one son.

Short Stories (1942-1960)

• "A Piece of Cake" (published as "Shot Down Over Libya," 1942)
• The Gremlins (1943)
• Over to You: Ten Stories of Flyers and Flying (1946)
• Sometime Never: A Fable for Superman (1948)
• Someone Like You (1953)
• Kiss Kiss (1960)

Dahl’s writing career began in 1942 with his wartime story. Originally, he wrote it with the title “A Piece of Cake,” and it was bought by The Saturday Evening Post for the substantial sum of $1,000. In order to be more dramatic for war propaganda purposes, however, it was renamed “Shot Down Over Libya,” even though Dahl had not, in fact, been shot down, let alone over Libya. His other major contribution to the war effort was The Gremlins , his first work for children. Originally, it was optioned by Walt Disney for an animated film , but a variety of production obstacles (problems with ensuring the rights to the idea of “gremlins” were open, issues with creative control and RAF involvement) led to the project’s eventual abandonment.

As the war came to an end, he kicked off a career writing short stories, mostly for adults and mostly published originally in a variety of American magazines. In the waning years of the war, many of his short stories remained focused on the war, the war effort, and propaganda for the Allies. First published in 1944 in Harper’s Bazaar , “Beware of the Dog” became one of Dahl’s most successful war stories and eventually was loosely adapted into two different movies.

In 1946, Dahl published his first short story collection. Entitled Over to You: Ten Stories of Flyers and Flying , the collection includes most of his war-era short stories . They’re notably different from the more famous works he’d later write; these stories were clearly rooted in the wartime setting and were more realistic and less quirky. He also tackled his first (of what would only be two) adult novels in 1948. Some Time Never: A Fable for Supermen was a work of dark speculative fiction, combining the premise of his children’s story The Gremlins with a dystopian future imagining worldwide nuclear war. It was largely a failure and has never been reprinted in English. Dahl returned to short stories, publishing two consecutive short story collections: Someone Like You in 1953 and Kiss Kiss in 1960.

Family Struggles and Children’s Stories (1960-1980)

• James and the Giant Peach (1961)
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
• The Magic Finger (1966)
• Twenty-Nine Kisses from Roald Dahl (1969)
• Fantastic Mr. Fox (1970)
• Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972)
• Switch Bitch (1974)
• Danny the Champion of the World (1975)
• The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (1978)
• The Enormous Crocodile (1978)
• The Best of Roald Dahl (1978)
• My Uncle Oswald (1979)
• Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
• The Twits (1980)
• More Tales of the Unexpected (1980)

The beginning of the decade included some devastating events for Dahl and his family. In 1960, his son Theo’s baby carriage was hit by a car, and Theo nearly died. He suffered from hydrocephalus, so Dahl collaborated with engineer Stanley Wade and neurosurgeon Kenneth Till to invent a valve that could be used to improve treatment. Less than two years later, Dahl's daughter, Olivia, died at age seven from measles encephalitis. As a result, Dahl became a staunch proponent of vaccinations and he also began questioning his faith—a well-known anecdote explained that Dahl was dismayed at an archbishop’s remark that Olivia’s beloved dog could not join her in heaven and began questioning whether or not the Church really was so infallible. In 1965, his wife Patricia suffered three burst cerebral aneurysms during her fifth pregnancy, requiring her to relearn basic skills like walking and talking; she did recover and eventually returned to her acting career.

Meanwhile, Dahl was becoming more and more involved in writing novels for children. James and the Giant Peach , published in 1961, became his first iconic children’s book, and the decade saw several more publications that would go on to endure for years. His 1964 novel, though, would be arguably his most famous: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory . The book received two film adaptations, one in 1971 and one in 2005, and a sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator , in 1972. In 1970, Dahl published The Fantastic Mr. Fox , another of his more famous children’s stories.

During this time, Dahl continued to turn out short story collections for adults as well. Between 1960 and 1980, Dahl published eight short story collections, including two “best of” style collections. My Uncle Oswald , published in 1979, was a novel using the same character of the lecherous “Uncle Oswald” who featured in a few of his earlier short stories for adults. He also continuously published new novels for children, which soon surpassed the success of his adult works. In the 1960s, he also briefly worked as a screenwriter, most notably adapting two Ian Fleming novels into films: the James Bond caper You Only Live Twice and the children’s movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang .

Later Stories for Both Audiences (1980-1990)

• George's Marvelous Medicine (1981)
• The BFG (1982)
• The Witches (1983)
• The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me (1985)
• Two Fables (1986)
• Matilda (1988)
• Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life: The Country Stories of Roald Dahl (1989)
• Esio Trot (1990)
• The Vicar of Nibbleswick (1991)
• The Minpins (1991)

By the early 1980s, Dahl’s marriage to Neal was falling apart. They divorced in 1983, and Dahl remarried that same year to Felicity d’Abreu Crosland, an ex-girlfriend. Around the same time, he caused some controversy with his remarks centered on Tony Clifton's picture book  God Cried , which depicted the siege of West Beirut by Israel during the 1982 Lebanon War. His comments at the time were widely interpreted as antisemitic , although others in his circle interpreted his anti-Israel comments as non-malicious and more targeted at the conflicts with Israel.

Among his most famous later stories are 1982’s The BFG and 1988’s Matilda . The latter book was adapted into a much-beloved film in 1996, as well as an acclaimed stage musical in 2010 on the West End and 2013 on Broadway. The last book released while Dahl was still alive was Esio Trot , a surprisingly sweet children’s novel about a lonely old man trying to connect with a woman he has fallen in love with from afar.

Literary Styles and Themes

Dahl was far and away best known for his very particular and unique approach to children’s literature . Certain elements in his books are easily traced to his ugly experiences at boarding school during his youth: villainous, terrifying adults in positions of power who hate children, precocious and observant children as protagonists and narrators, school settings, and plenty of imagination. Although the boogeymen of Dahl’s childhood certainly made plenty of appearances—and, crucially, were always defeated by the children—he also tended to write token “good” adults as well.

Despite being famous for writing for children, Dahl’s sense of style is famously a unique hybrid of the whimsical and the gleefully macabre. It’s a distinctively child-centric approach, but one with a subversive undertone to its obvious warmth. The details of his antagonists’ villainy are often described in childlike but nightmarish detail, and the comic threads in stories such as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are laced with dark or even violent moments. Gluttony is a particular target for Dahl’s sharply violent retribution, with several notably fat characters in his canon receiving disturbing or violent ends.

Dahl’s language is notable for its playful style and intentional malapropisms . His books are littered with new words of his own invention, often created by switching around letters or mix-and-matching existing sounds to make words that still made sense, even though they weren’t real words. In 2016, for the centenary of Dahl's birth, lexicographer Susan Rennie created  The Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary , a guide to his invented words and their “translations” or meanings.

Near the end of his life, Dahl was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare cancer of the blood, typically affecting older patients, that occurs when blood cells do not “mature” into healthy blood cells. Roald Dahl died on November 23, 1990, in Oxford, England. He was buried at the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Great Missenden, in Buckinghamshire, England, in a fittingly unusual fashion: he was buried with some chocolates and wine, pencils, his favorite pool cues, and a power saw. To this day, his grave remains a popular site, where children and adults alike pay tribute by leaving flowers and toys.

Dahl’s legacy largely dwells in the enduring power of his children’s books. Several of his most famous works have been adapted into several different media, from film and television to radio to stage. It’s not just his literary contributions that have continued to have an impact, though. After his death, his widow Felicity continued his charitable work through the Roald Dahl Marvellous Children’s Charity, which supports children with various illnesses throughout the UK. In 2008, the UK charity Booktrust and Children's Laureate Michael Rosen joined forces to create The Roald Dahl Funny Prize, awarded annually to authors of humorous children's fiction. Dahl’s particular brand of humor and his sophisticated yet approachable voice for children’s fiction have left an indelible mark.

• Boothroyd, Jennifer.  Roald Dahl: A Life of Imagination . Lerner Publications, 2008.
• Shavick, Andrea.  Roald Dahl: The Champion Storyteller . Oxford University Press, 1997.
• Sturrock, Donald.  Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl , Simon & Schuster, 2010.
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Children's author Roald Dahl wrote the kids' classics 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,' 'Matilda' and 'James and the Giant Peach,' among other famous works.

(1916-1990)

Who Was Roald Dahl?

Roald Dahl was a British author who penned 19 children's books over his decades-long writing career. In 1953 he published the best-selling story collection Someone Like You and married actress Patricia Neal. He published the popular book James and the Giant Peach in 1961. In 1964 he released another highly successful work, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , which was later adapted for two films.

Early Life and Education

Dahl was born in Llandaff, South Wales, on September 13, 1916. Dahl's parents were Norwegian. As a child, he spent his summer vacations visiting with his grandparents in Oslo. When Dahl was four years old, his father died.

The young Dahl received his earliest education at Llandaff Cathedral School. When the principal gave him a harsh beating for playing a practical joke, Dahl's mother decided to enroll her rambunctious and mischievous child at St. Peter's, a British boarding school, as had been her husband's wish.

Dahl later transferred to Repton, a private school with a reputation for academic excellence. He resented the rules at Repton; while there, the lively and imaginative youngster was restless and ached for adventure.

While Dahl hardly excelled as a student, his mother offered to pay for his tuition at Oxford or Cambridge University when he graduated. Dahl's response, as quoted from his autobiography, Boy: Tales of Childhood , was, "No thank you. I want to go straight from school to work for a company that will send me to wonderful faraway places like Africa or China."

And that he did. After Dahl graduated from Repton in 1932, he went on an expedition to Newfoundland. Afterward, he took a job with the Shell Oil Company in Tanzania, Africa, where he remained until 1939.

Over his decades-long writing career, Dahl composed 19 children’s books. Despite their popularity, Dahl’s children’s books have been the subject of some controversy, as critics and parents have balked at their portrayal of children’s harsh revenge on adult wrongdoers. In his defense, Dahl claimed that children have a cruder sense of humor than adults, and that he was merely trying to appeal to his readers.

'James and the Giant Peach' (1961)

Dahl first established himself as a children’s writer in 1961, when he published the book James and the Giant Peach , a book about a lonely little boy living with his two mean aunts who meets the Old Green Grasshopper and his insect friends on a giant, magical peach. The book met with wide critical and commercial acclaim.

'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' (1964)

Three years after his first children’s book, Dahl published another big winner, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory . A quirky, solitary businessman, Willy Wonka, has been holed up alone inside his fantastical chocolate factory until he releases five golden tickets inside the wrappers of candy bars. Winners — including the poor little boy Charlie Bucket, who doesn’t have much to eat — are awarded a visit. Some critics have accused Dahl of portraying a racist stereotype with his Oompa-Loompa characters in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

'Fantastic Mr. Fox' (1970)

Three farmers are out to get the cunning trickster Mr. Fox, who outwits them every time. Mr. Fox lives in a tree with his wife and family, which was inspired by a real 150-year beech tree Dahl knew as the “witches tree” standing outside his house.

'The BFG' (1982)

Of his many stories, Roald Dahl said The BFG was his favorite. He came up with the idea for a giant who stores dreams in bottles for kids to enjoy when they sleep several years before, and he told the story of the Big Friendly Giant to his own kids at bedtime.

'The Witches' (1983)

A boy happens upon a witch convention, where the witches are planning to get rid of every last child in England. The boy and his grandmother must battle the witches to save the children.

'Matilda' (1988)

Roald Dahl’s last long story follows the adventures of a genius five-year-old girl, Matilda Wormwood, who uses her powers to help her beloved teacher outwit the cruel headmistress.

Dahl wrote several television and movie scripts. Several film adaptations of his books have also been created (all of those made during his lifetime Dahl famously despised), most notably:

'Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' (1971)

This Dahl favorite, originally known as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a book, starred Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. An originally titled remake of the film, starring Johnny Depp , was released in 2005.

'The BFG' (1989, 2016)

The BFG was first made into a stop-motion animated film in 1989, with David Jason playing the voice of the Big Friendly Giant. The movie was remade in 2016 by Steven Spielberg and featured live actors.

'The Witches' (1990)

In this live-action film features Anjelica Huston as the Grand High Witch. Rowan Atkinson also appeared as hotel manager Mr. Stringer.

'Matilda' (1996)

Danny DeVito directed this movie adaptation and also voiced the narrator.

'The Fantastic Mr. Fox' (2009)

In 2009, Wes Anderson directed this quirky, touching animated feature about the adventures of the farm-raiding Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney ), with a cast including Meryl Streep (Mrs. Fox) and Bill Murray (Badger).

'The Witches' (2020)

Another live-action film of the book starring Anne Hathaway .

Short Stories

Dahl began his writing career with short stories; in all, he published nine short story collections. Dahl first caught the writing bug while in Washington, D.C., when he met with author C.S. Forrester, who encouraged him to start writing. Dahl published his first short story in the Saturday Evening Post . He went on to write stories and articles for other magazines, including The New Yorker .

Of his early writing career, Dahl told New York Times book reviewer Willa Petschek, "As I went on the stories became less and less realistic and more fantastic." He went on to describe his foray into writing as a "pure fluke," saying, "Without being asked to, I doubt if I'd ever have thought to do it."

Dahl wrote his first story for children, The Gremlins , in 1942, for Walt Disney . The story wasn't terribly successful, so Dahl went back to writing macabre and mysterious stories geared toward adult readers. He continued in this vein into the 1950s, producing the best-selling story collection Someone Like You in 1953, and Kiss, Kiss in 1959.

Wives and Children

The same year that Someone Like You was published, Dahl married film actress Patricia Neal, who won an Academy Award for her role in Hud in 1961. The marriage lasted three decades and resulted in five children, one of whom tragically died in 1962.

Dahl told his children nightly bedtime stories that inspired his future career as a children's writer. These stories became the basis for some of his most popular kids' books, as his children proved an informative test audience. "Children are ... highly critical. And they lose interest so quickly," he asserted in his New York Times book review interview. “You have to keep things ticking along. And if you think a child is getting bored, you must think up something that jolts it back. Something that tickles. You have to know what children like."

After Neal suffered from multiple brain hemorrhages in the mid-1960s, Dahl stood by her through her long recovery. The couple would eventually divorce in 1983. Soon after, Dahl married Felicity Ann Crosland, his partner until his death in 1990.

Dahl died on November 23, 1990, at the age of 74. After suffering an unspecified infection, on November 12, 1990, Dahl had been admitted to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Roald Dahl
• Birth Year: 1916
• Birth date: September 13, 1916
• Birth City: Llandaff, South Wales
• Birth Country: United Kingdom
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Children's author Roald Dahl wrote the kids' classics 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,' 'Matilda' and 'James and the Giant Peach,' among other famous works.
• Writing and Publishing
• Astrological Sign: Virgo
• Interesting Facts
• Of the films that were adapted from his books during his lifetime, Roald Dahl came to despise them.
• Of his many stories, Roald Dahl said 'The BFG' was his favorite.
• Death Year: 1990
• Death date: November 23, 1990
• Death City: Oxford
• Death Country: United Kingdom

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

• Children are ... highly critical. And they lose interest so quickly. You have to keep things ticking along. And if you think a child is getting bored, you must think up something that jolts it back. Something that tickles. You have to know what children like.
• As I went on, the stories became less and less realistic and more fantastic. But becoming a writer was pure fluke. Without being asked to, I doubt if I'd ever have thought of it.
• A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.
• The writer for children must be a jokey sort of a fellow. He must like simple tricks and jokes and riddles and other childish things. He must be ... inventive. He must have a really first-class plot.

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“The Facts Behind a Fantasist’s Unsettling Stories”

This review was written by Michiko Kakutani and printed in the April 26, 1994 edition of The New York Times .

ROALD DAHL: A BIOGRAPHY. By Jeremy Treglown. Illustrated. 322 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $25.

By turns macabre and magical, fantastical and perverse, Roald Dahl’s stories for children and for adults are peculiarly modern folk tales, animated by primal longings, resentments and fears. In such classic children’s books as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , The BFG , The Witches , and James and the Giant Peach , death and loss and separation are palpable enough realities – surfacing in the form of cannibalistic giants, tyrannical adults and spell-casting witches – but there is also the possibility of liberation and transcendence. Mr. Dahl’s solitary child heroes routinely triumph over their adversaries, while achieving love or knowledge or success.

His stories for grown-ups are decidedly more cynical and malicious. In these, manipulation takes the place of magic, cruelty the place of irreverence. In “Lamb to the Slaughter,” a pregnant woman kills her unfaithful husband by hitting him over the head with a frozen leg of lamb, which she later cooks and serves to the police. In “Skin,” a starving man is forced to sell a picture of his wife that has been tattooed onto his back by a famous artist. And in “Taste,” a pretentious aesthete bets his daughter’s hand in marriage that a dinner guest can’t identify what he’s drinking.

As Roald Dahl: A Biography , Jeremy Treglown’s marvelously supple and illuminating book, so nimbly demonstrates, Dahl, who died in 1990 at the age of 74, was a man of many contradictions: a Tory who loved to subvert authority, a misanthrope who found optimism in adversity, a shameless self-promoter who enjoyed giving money to worthy causes. “He was famously a war hero, a connoisseur, a philanthropist, a devoted family man who had to confront an appalling succession of tragedies,” writes Mr. Treglown. “He was also, as will be seen, a fantasist, an anti-Semite, a bully and a self-publicizing troublemaker.”

In the words of a longtime Dahl family friend: “Almost anything you could say about him would be true. It depended which side he decided to show you.”

Throughout his adult life, Dahl retained an adolescent desire to shock – he specialized in practical jokes and outrageous dinner-party remarks – and his fiction, too, remained firmly rooted in the experiences of his childhood and youth. Having lost his father and his sister when he was 4, Dahl grew up in Wales as the apple of his mother’s eye; though lonely and bereaved, he was very much the center of attention at home, a situation that nurtured both his oversize imagination and his oversize ego.

At St. Peter’s Preparatory School and Repton, Dahl was exposed to the bullying, beatings and competitiveness endemic to so many British public schools in the 1920’s and 30’s, and the experience, Mr. Treglown suggests, instilled in him a keen sense of the consequences of emotional and physical violence, and a highly developed taste for antiauthoritarian fantasies.

World War II enabled Dahl to live out some of his dreams: first, as a fighter pilot for the Royal Air Force (he is credited with having shot down five enemy airplanes), and later as a sometime spy for British intelligence in Washington. The experiences, this biography contends, gave him plenty of material on which to exercise his self-mythologizing imagination, and they also helped galvanize the darker aspects of his sensibility. “It can’t have helped that in Washington he was professionally encouraged to practice opportunism, duplicity, entrapment,” writes Mr. Treglown. “It is not far from these to the cynicism of his postwar short stories.”

Storytelling began, it seems, as a way for Dahl to monopolize attention at parties; it was a way, says Mr. Treglown, for “assessing, and sometimes dominating, his listener.” With the series of personal tragedies that overtook Dahl’s adult life – his son was seriously injured in a car accident, his oldest daughter died of measles and his first wife, the actress Patricia Neal, suffered a debilitating stroke at the age of 38 – storytelling assumed another meaning as well. By creating a succession of children’s books featuring wizards, magicians and real heroes, Mr. Treglown implies, Dahl was able to enact his own fantasies of being “powerful enough to be able to conquer illness and other misfortunes.”

In the real world, of course, storytelling served more practical ends as well: as sales of his children’s stories escalated into the millions, Dahl became a wealthy and famous author. According to Mr. Treglown, Dahl reveled in his business success and began campaigning in vain for a knighthood. He dispensed highly mythologized versions of his own life, even conducting a self-serving interview with himself.

As depicted in these pages, Dahl emerges as a difficult, sometimes impossible man. He bullied Ms. Neal and his children, and dealt cavalierly with the editors on whose suggestions he depended. He was also a blatant anti-Semite, arguing that “even a stinker like Hitler” hadn’t picked on Jews “for no reason.”

Mr. Treglown, a former editor of The Times Literary Supplement, deals frankly with these disturbing aspects of Dahl’s life, while at the same time explicating his fiction with sympathy and intelligence. He is eloquent on the themes and sources of Dahl’s stories, and equally adept at conveying the collaborative nature of the work (between writer, editor and illustrator) involved in the production of his children’s books.

Mr. Treglown has written an astute and judicious biography, and in doing so, has created a highly compelling portrait of an author whose life was nearly as colorful and unpredictable as his fiction.

• 05:56 - Apr 11, 2024

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Roald Dahl: A Biography

• By Chris Chan
• October 17, 2023
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M any children first fell in love with reading thanks to the creative storytelling of Roald Dahl , who successfully blended magic and mischief into his colorful tales. His work is known for strong and inspirational kids at the center of the story, as well as outrageous humor and incredible imagination. While Dahl’s writings—both for children and adults—can be remarkably loveable, the man himself was often cantankerous, difficult, and deeply flawed.

Jeremy Treglown’s biography of Dahl is a “warts and all” tale. We see flashes of strong and compassionate behavior, such as when his son was in a terrible accident; we also see him being boorish with women and displaying shocking anger towards one of his daughters. If the portrait Treglown paints of Dahl at times comes across as surprisingly close to one of Dahl’s villains, it must be stressed that frequently the author makes Dahl appear as sympathetic as one of the heroes in his own stories, as a strong-willed champion facing impossible odds. Treglown makes it clear that Dahl did not have an easy time with his publishing career, as story after story was turned down by agents and magazines, and the plots of his books were forced to be revised. Not only that, but the lion’s share of his royalties was taken by taxes and publishers.

One of the best parts of Treglown’s analysis is his disapproval of how literary criticism is used as a machete to tear writers apart at the slightest provocation. He illustrates how Dahl’s reputation suffered when critics deliberately misinterpreted his books (pp. 179-180). Dahl was always an outsider in the literary community, denied the awards and the standing he desperately desired. Treglown manages a difficult balancing act: At times we see Dahl behaving monstrously, at other times eccentrically, but then he makes Dahl sympathetic again with a quick anecdote or an impassioned paragraph.

While Treglown’s book provides a good, quick read for people who would like to know about Dahl’s life, there are other resources that Dahl fans should consult. His autobiographies, Boy , which covers his childhood years, and  Going Solo , which discusses his time serving in the Second World War, are wonderful reads, though recent scholarship has brought their veracity and accuracy into question. Increasingly, those who have studied Dahl’s life have concluded that he never let facts get in the way of a good story, but if one examines the emotional truth behind the occasionally outrageous stories and the too-good-to-be-true adventures, readers can glimpse the twin forces that shaped him, including a loving mother on the one hand, and a heartless and soul-crushing school environment on the other. Neither of those forces is given much attention in Treglown’s book, which focuses mostly on the man, his writing career, and those closest to him.

Treglown touches upon many events in Dahl’s life, including the stroke of his first wife American actress Patricia Neal, but details are at times strikingly sparse. For a much more detailed look at Dahl’s career and the various events that made up his life, Donald Sturrock’s  Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl provides a far more comprehensive summary. Sturrock’s book is quite long, and Treglown’s work is easier for readers to study and digest.

This book is meant for readers who are thoroughly familiar with Dahl’s work because otherwise some of his best stories would be spoiled.

Here and there Treglown’s literary criticism errs. At one point, he describes Wonka as responsible for the disposal of those who cross him, when in fact the children and parents who meet unpleasant (but not mortal) fates receive their comeuppance due to their own poor choices and impulsive behavior. Some of Dahl’s best short stories are summarized in two or three sentences, with their surprise endings spoiled. People not familiar with his legendary twists should, therefore, be cautious. Also, Dahl’s adult novel  My Uncle Oswald has many fans, but Treglown presents it as a critical and artistic failure.

Indeed, one of the most compelling portions of the book is when Treglown depicts Dahl and his struggles to succeed. We see glimpses of Dahl’s troubles with Hollywood, as he makes a great deal of money writing screenplays while refusing to take criticism well, and rarely taking pride in the finished product. It is gently heartbreaking when we see some of Dahl’s most impressive short stories rejected by the  New Yorker , and we see some ambivalence about his work being accepted instead by  Playboy . There is also an accusation of plagiarism that is given surprisingly short thrift—one of his short stories is noted to have an identical plot with someone else’s work, but whether the theft of the idea was deliberate or not is not explored, and the point is abandoned without much explanation (p. 125).

Treglown’s book does a fine job explaining the details of Dahl’s life, but it doesn’t quite explain why Dahl’s mind took the shape it did, nor why his personal life influenced the direction of his books and characters. Nevertheless, it provides a frank and interesting look at the events of Dahl’s career, and it is a useful reference source for fans who want to find out more about the man behind Willy Wonka, the BFG, Matilda, and scores of other memorable characters.

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The Real Dahl

New biography offers an unvarnished account of an author’s troubled life

“When writing stories, I cannot seem to rid myself of the unfortunate habit of having one person do nasty things to another person,” Roald Dahl once said during his introduction to an episode of the program Tales of the Unexpected based on his short story “Neck.”

Devotees of Dahl’s work, and those of us who may not identify as fans but read his yarns with a kind of wary interest, might wonder now and then about the sources of the bitterness, cruelty, and viciousness so pervasive in that part of his oeuvre meant for adults. A reader of Matthew Dennison’s finely written Roald Dahl: Teller of the Unexpected may come away with a sense that the notable personal and professional successes in the writer’s life were punctuated by so much frustration, failure, horror, and trauma that Dahl could not have kept these things out of his writing if he had wanted to do so.

Crash-landing his plane and suffering injuries as an RAF pilot in the deserts of Libya during the war may have been one of the lesser calamities to befall Dahl, when you consider how many young British men suffered permanently debilitating or disfiguring wounds and just shy of 400,000 of his countrymen did not come home at all.

As Dennison details, the real trials in Dahl’s life began when he embarked on a literary career and wedded Patricia Neal, whose success on the screen and ability, at times in their marriage, to earn vastly more from her acting than Dahl did from his writing put him to shame. Dahl probably did not much like the fact that Neal had been smitten with the more photogenic Gary Cooper, who reportedly pressured her into getting an abortion. Neal would later come close to death from a stroke, but Dennison’s account of this malady is far from the ghastliest thing in his short book. The passages about Roald and Patricia’s daughter Olivia falling ill with measles and dying at the age of just seven are harrowing.

Also hard to take is the incident where a car on a busy street in Upper Manhattan hits the pram carrying their male child, Theo, and then speeds up rather than stopping, causing the tiny boy to go flying through the air. Theo lived but contracted a form of hydrocephalus so severe that it called for the development of a special valve , which still bears Dahl’s name along with those of its other inventors. Blessedly, Theo got better, and the valve played a role in the recovery of thousands of other kids.

Dennison describes a father who responded to the accident with resolution and courage, sticking by the boy in the hospital, following every development, generally defying circumstances that might have driven other parents to despair. This contrasts with other passages in the book where Dahl responds to his own body’s problems and his personal and professional frustrations by overindulging in drink.

Dahl sells his fiction to magazines and makes a nice bit of cash, but tries his hand at writing a novel only to find that this step up does not come as easily and organically as he hoped. Some Time Never is a train wreck of a book no one wants to touch. Dahl pals around with Ernest Hemingway and uses his RAF ties to get Papa a correspondent gig, but then Hemingway’s wife Martha Gellhorn, who did not get to go with her husband on the press dispatch, finds a stay with Dahl to be excruciatingly dull.

Dahl’s story “The Way Up to Heaven” appears in the New Yorker in January 1954, and then years go by before he can place more work there. A meeting with a young Robert Altman leads to a deal where the two will jointly pitch a film to the studios, with Dahl as writer and Altman as director, but what seems like a promising venture goes sideways and Dahl gets screwed out of the $75,000 promised to him when United Artists says no to having Altman direct. Dahl’s fortunes fluctuate and tensions with the more consistently successful Patricia fester until he begins to cheat on her with the woman who will become his second wife. His health is treacherous and he drinks with abandon.

In the midst of all this, Dennison stresses how charming, funny, and kind the writer could be, personally answering letters from readers of his children’s books and treating his zanier correspondents with respect and fondness. But even in a century not known for the saintly deportment of its writers and public figures, the dog-eat-dog struggles and the luridness and tragedy of his inner life cannot fail to make an impression. Dennison has helped readers grasp how the life of Dahl the man must have informed the work of Dahl the writer. The nastiness comes out over and over in his work, sometimes in inspired forms and at other times in ways it would be hard to call intelligent.

For an example of the latter, consider the fifth film in the James Bond franchise, 1967’s You Only Live Twice, which came about after producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Bruccoli approached Dahl looking to hire a screenwriter. For some of us, this movie epitomizes everything that made us hate the Bond franchise right up until its Daniel Craig reconfiguration: gadgets, cute violence, cheesy humor, cartoonish villains, and faceless, one-note ciphers introduced and killed off so perfunctorily that their lives and deaths lack all resonance and they are so much fodder for the titillation of juveniles.

It’s a shame that this film is so idiotic, because the premise is kind of interesting. Ten years after the launch of Sputnik 1, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were still both insanely jealous of their respective space programs, and a madman’s plot to provoke a war between the great powers by stealing their rockets could have made for a riveting drama if done right. If you didn’t see Dahl’s name in the credits, you would never guess that the screenwriter was a world-famous author.

Dahl’s preoccupations emerged in infinitely more engaging form in the ironic, witty, dark stories that will continue to be read and celebrated. Of these, you could find few more interesting examples than “Skin,” which ran in the New Yorker in May 1952 and lent its title to one of his edgiest collections. This tale of what happens to an aging man who has, on his back, the work of an artist who was unknown when they hung out together in Paris in 1913, but whose paintings are now the crown jewels of any gallery that can get ahold of them, lends itself to reading on so many levels.

The story is about the commodification of art, or the mercenary nature of dealers not unlike some of the editors and producers Dahl dealt with over the course of his career, or the lengths to which people will go to get what they want—literally selling their own skin—or simply about the callousness and brutality of the world. This is brilliant stuff—the right sort of darkness, the best kind of Dahl.

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Michael Washburn

Michael Washburn is a Brooklyn-based writer and journalist and the author, most recently, of The Uprooted and Other Stories (2018), When We're Grownups (2019), and Stranger, Stranger (2020). He's also host of the weekly Sea of Reeds Media podcast, Reading the Globe .

2 thoughts on “ The Real Dahl ”

Great review! Dahl led a more than fascinating life. Those looking for more detail on Dahl’s own post crash posted to Washington as war hero espionage career and role in working with a young Ian Fleming, future advertising legend David Ogilvy and iconic Canadian spymaster William Stephenson the man Churchill code named “Intrepid” to help draw the US into WWII with plenty of “fake news” and other hearts and minds manipulation can take a look at Jennet Connant’s terrific book “The Irregulars” (2008).

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Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl - review

A born storyteller is always born with an interesting story. A phenomenally successful author all over the globe, Roald Dahl is a man whose stories were crafted with pure genius and that special touch of zaniness that very few are blessed to have.

Boy is the first part of an autobiographical series written by Roald Dahl himself and it tells the tale of the beginnings of one of the greatest children's writers the world has seen.

Boy narrates the story of Dahl's childhood. Starting from the unfortunate incident of how his Norwegian Papa, Harold Dahl lost his arm and moving on to a hilarious account of how much he hated his first boarding school Llandalf Cathedral.

Personally, my favorite chapter involves the incident with the dead mice and a sweet shop and each chapter goes on to describe how Dahl grew up in a world of tuck boxes, strict headmasters and of course lots of sisters and brothers. This including a rather annoying brother in law as well.

The book also has those few extra treats tucked inbetween the pages, like how Dahl's childhood affair with Cadbury's inspired him to write Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Quentin Blake's black and white illustrations peppered here and there.

Roald Dahl is one of those people who can turn something as boring as mice into something scandalous and eerily fabulous. Almost every chapter written in Boy describes a fairly ordinary event in a young boy's life made extraordinary with that little bit of Dahl magic.

The author and the book speak for themselves. It isn't sophisticated or classy, but it's a Dahl autobiography, which makes anyone who turns their nose up at it a right twit.

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15 Best Roald Dahl Books for Kids and Adults Alike

Posted: April 10, 2024 | Last updated: April 10, 2024

It goes without saying that Roald Dahl’s impressive repertoire of children’s books are classics. Road Dahl books are arguably some of the most widely recognized by both children and adults alike.

The beloved author is back in the headlines recently for controversial reasons, though. Some of his books, including iconic titles like “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “James and the Giant Peach,” are being rewritten by Puffin Books.

This action has been met with much criticism from other beloved children’s book authors including Judy Blume . “I think if Roald Dahl was around, you would be hearing what he thinks about that. Whatever he is, whatever he’s accused of being, there’s a lot of truth there,” she said . “But the books are the books. Kids still love the books, and they love them the way he wrote them. So I don’t believe in that.”

Regardless of your take on the current controversy, one thing is for sure: Roald Dahl wrote classics that have shaped the childhoods of countless readers. We rounded up the best of the best Roald Dahl books you should absolutely have on your bookshelf.

1) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Probably the most famous of the Roald Dahl books, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is a story that spans multiple generations.

Originally written back in 1964, the story of the honest Charlie Bucket and the four other mischievous children who get to visit Willy Wonka’s factory still resonates with audiences today — because of the timeless tome, yes, but also due to its several film adaptations, including the most recent one starring Johnny Depp.

More: Roald Dahl Wrote 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' During the 'Most Difficult Years of His Life'

Is there anything more magical than the classic tale of “Matilda?” An Amazon Teacher’s Pick, this story describes the life of a sweet, exceptional young girl with parents who don’t understand her. It’s available in many formats, including an audiobook read by Kate Winslet. It’s the perfect complement to the new musical that’s currently streaming on Netflix.

3) The Witches

The first time you met the witches serves as a core memory for many millennials. This classic novel by Roald Dahl speaks to children (and children-at-heart) from any generation. Not your average fairy tale, this one is a bit scary and focuses on the story of The Grand High Witch, her coven, and what they do to children who don’t behave.

4) James and the Giant Peach

Poor James — his parents are tragically eaten by a rhinoceros and he’s forced to move in with his two horrible aunts, Spiker and Sponge. It’s no fun at all there, until one day, when he drops some magic crystals by the old peach tree. Strange things happen and life starts to take an exciting turn for young James. This “peachy” scented edition makes the adventure even more fun.

5) The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Another classic Roald Dahl book, “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” (now also a charming Wes Anderson claymation film by the same name) tells the story of Mr. Fox himself. The sly main character has been stealing from the three meanest farmers around. They’re on a mission to catch him, but Mr. Fox is determined to win at any cost. He has a fantastic plan to get away with it, too.

6) The Twits

The Twits is Roald Dahl’s story about a gross couple. No, literally: They’re smelly, nasty, and downright mean. They love to play jokes on each other and also treat their caged monkeys, the Muggle-Womps, poorly. But the Muggle-Womps have had enough and are ready to strike back against the Twits.

7) Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

If you loved “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” you’ll love this follow-up Roald Dahl book.

“Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator” picks up where the first book left off. It details the story of Charlie’s adventure with his family and Willy Wonka, who are all traveling inside the Great Glass Elevator, a thousand feet above the chocolate factory. They can see the whole world below them — but they're not alone.

Another beloved classic book from Roald Dahl, “The BFG” is also a fan-favorite film . It’s the heart-warming tale of Sophie who is snatched from her orphanage bed by the BFG, short for Big Friendly Giant. Sophie is initially afraid that the BFG will eat her, but she ends up joining forces to battle some less gentle giants who threaten the children of Earth.

9) Danny the Champion of the World

Another unique child experience masterfully described by Roald Dahl, Danny is one of a kind. He lives in a van, is the youngest master car mechanic around, and his best friend is his dad. One night though, Danny discovers a shocking secret that his father never told him and everything seems to change.

10) The Magic Finger

“The Magic Finger” depicts the story of the Gregg family who loves to hunt. Their next-door neighbor, a special little girl, does not like it at all. When she gets angry, she can’t help herself when she turns her magic finger on the Gregg family. Before they know it, they’re transformed in a big way.

11) Going Solo

This Roald Dahl book is actually an autobiographical account of the life of the writer himself before he became the author that we know and love today.

It details his exploits as a World War II pilot, including the daring deeds and fantastic adventures you might not know about this beloved author.

12) Skin and Other Stories

One of Roald Dahl’s lesser-known books, “Skin and Other Stories” is still one worth having on your bookshelf. It’s a collection of eleven short stories that ask provocative questions. How would you get rid of a murder weapon? Where would you hide a diamond? Roald Dahl gives his spin on these mysterious topics (and more!) in this interesting book.

13) George's Marvelous Medicine

Another classic often shared in elementary schools, teachers and children alike love “George’s Marvelous Medicine.”

George is with his grandma — who is a horribly grouchy grandma. He takes it upon himself to make a special medicine for her to cure her of this grouchiness. Similar to most Roald Dahl books, hilarity ensues, and the outcome isn’t exactly what George initially expected.

14) The Enormous Crocodile

Another great use of character development by Road Dahl, this book tells the story of The Enormous Crocodile. He is incredibly hungry and equally greedy. Of course, he loves to eat children, too. He thinks he can’t be stopped, but other animals in the jungle have something to say about that. Soon the Enormous Crocodile learns a lesson he won’t forget.

15) Roald Dahl 15-Book Box Set

Want to grab all of the essential Roald Dahl books at once? Look no further. This great set of Roald Dahl classics includes many on our list, like “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “The Twits,” and more of the best Roald Dahl books that deserve a spot on your shelf.

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BRAND NEW STORIES FEATURING ROALD DAHL’S ICONIC CHARACTERS COMING LATER THIS YEAR

We are thrilled to announce new books inspired by Roald Dahl’s iconic stories and characters, created by acclaimed contemporary storytellers and illustrators. The new publishing for 2024 includes two new  books alongside a new picture book series to add to the Roald Dahl preschool range.

These new books are designed to bring new readers to Roald Dahl’s original stories, which continue to delight generations of readers around the world with their unique mix of mischief, irreverence, and memorable characters. Told by acclaimed contemporary storytellers and illustrators, they will give readers more of Roald Dahl’s unique worlds and iconic characters - standing alongside the much loved and much-loved books by Roald Dahl, illustrated by Quentin Blake - to excite and entertain present and future fans in new ways.

The major publishing moment of the year will be THE TWITS NEXT DOOR , a deliciously revolting adventure filled with twists and tricks and starring two of Roald Dahl’s most popular creations, The Twits. This brand new story is written by internationally bestselling authors and children’s literacy advocates Greg James and Chris Smith and illustrated by Emily Jones . 

Mr. and Mrs. Twit are just about as nasty and revolting as two people can get. The only thing that  brings the two of them pleasure is playing pranks on one another. But, when a new family called the  Lovelies move in next door, with their lively 10-year-old twins, they teach The Twits to stop being so  mean and horrible and they all live happily ever after . . .  Ha! Not really. The Twits HATE the  Lovelies. But how far will The Twits go to rid themselves of their horribly nice new neighbours? And what  happens when these new neighbours, who are armed with utter loveliness, start to fight back?

Greg James and Chris Smith said: 'We have spent many years visiting schools around the world with our children’s books, and we were never far from a child whose head was buried in a Roald Dahl book. It’s magical to see a writer we both loved growing up still able to encourage new generations of young people to pick up a book and have a great time. To be offered the opportunity to write a story starring the most revolting and hilarious pair of his famous characters was exciting, a little bit frightening and certainly too good to resist. We’ve had such a great time playing with The Twits and have loved expanding their world and introducing some new characters to it. We can’t wait to share it with everyone.'

THE TWITS NEXT DOOR will publish in hardback, trade paperback, audio, and ebook in August 2024.

Following on from THE TWITS NEXT DOOR will be CHARLIE AND THE CHRISTMAS FACTORY , a magical yet hilarious short story collection which will see a host of bestselling, much-loved storytellers writing brand-new short stories based on their favourite Roald Dahl characters and worlds.

CHARLIE AND THE CHRISTMAS FACTORY offers a seasonal reading experience for readers keen to find out why Matilda is worried about being on the naughty list, what happens when, years after the creation of his original marvellous medicine, George’s granddaughter Gigi decides to make her own potion, and how Charlie plans to celebrate Christmas at the chocolate factory.  

Illustrated throughout by Klauss Flugge Prize longlisted artist Rikin Parekh , the storytellers and their respective Roald Dahl characters and worlds are: Adam Hills (The Enormous Crocodile), Adam Kay  (George’s Marvellous Medicine), Ben Bailey-Smith (James and The Giant Peach), Elle McNicoll  (Matilda), Greg James and Chris Smith (The Twits), Hannah Gold (Fantastic Mr Fox), Konnie Huq  (Danny the Champion of the World), Nadia Shireen (The BFG), Nathan Bryon (The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me), Pamela Butchart (The Witches), Sally Rippin (The Magic Finger), and Sibéal Pounder  (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). 

Rikin Parekh said: 

'Of course, I am a firm believer in the magic that is created when words and illustrations blend perfectly. And no combination is as magical as that of Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake. To collaborate with some of today’s best storytellers, to bring our own interpretations to some of the most iconic worlds and characters in the history of children’s books, has been an absolute privilege and a lot of fun. I hope that aspiring storytellers feel the same magic and excitement by Charlie and The Christmas Factory as we all did when we picked up a Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake book for the first time.'

CHARLIE AND THE CHRISTMAS FACTORY will publish in hardback, trade paperback, audio, and  ebook in October 2024.

This new publishing will be complemented in May 2024 by LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD – the first in a series of picture book versions of Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes – seeing Roald Dahl’s original text accompanied by Adam Larkum ’s wonderfully mischievous and exuberant illustrations. 

Harriet Murphy , Director of Publishing at RDSC said:

'We have been so impressed by the authors’ brilliant ability to capture the unique spirit of a Roald Dahl story and bring us some wonderfully funny tales of their own imagination. Roald Dahl’s stories are amongst some of the greatest children’s books, but we aren't looking to imitate him, instead we wanted the authors to have fun and to use their own voice to take his extraordinary characters and creations into new stories which can delight existing fans and new readers alike.'

Ruth Knowles , Publishing Director at Puffin said: 

'We’re delighted to be celebrating Roald Dahl’s unique sense of the extraordinary, the magical and the mischievous with these very special new books. Greg and Chris, Emily, Rikin and the Christmas team of authors have created completely unique, brilliant, hilarious stories that lifelong fans and readers new to Roald Dahl will love. As well as being wonderfully accessible middle grade new books, they also perfectly celebrate the original characters and worlds they’re based on and so, alongside Dahl's classic texts, offer even more choice for readers as to how they experience Roald Dahl.'

THE TWITS NEXT DOOR and CHARLIE AND THE CHRISTMAS FACTORY  are available to pre-order now.

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