Roald Dahl - (1916 - 1990)

His Life:

He had an unhappy time at school. "I was appalled by the fact that masters and senior boys were allowed literally to wound other boys, and sometimes quite severely. I couldn't get over it. I never got over it..." These experiences later inspired him to write stories in which children fight against cruel adults and authorities.

"Parents and schoolteachers are the enemy," Dahl once said. "The adult is the enemy of the child because of the awful process of civilizing this thing that when it is born is an animal with no manners, no moral sense at all." In Witches (1973) behind the mask of a beautiful woman is an ugly witch, and in Matilda (1988) Miss Turnbull throws children out of windows. Both parents are eaten in James and the Giant Peach (1961), but the real enemies of the hero of the story, a little boy, are two aunts.

Wartime Experiences

Begins Writing

Roald Dahl’s first novel for children was not, as many suppose, James and the Giant Peach but The Gremlins, which was published in 1943 and adapted from a script written for Disney. Dahl went on to write several film scripts, including the James Bond adventure "You Only Live Twice" and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". He disliked many of the film adaptions of his own work which appeared in his lifetime.

Family Tragedies

Writing in England

Roald Dahl died in 1990 at the age of 74. He was working to the end.

Popularity of Books

From the publication of James and the Giant Peach and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory in the 1960s to his death in 1990, Roald Dahl became the most successful children’s author in the world.(Now replaced by Rowling and the Harry Potter books) Fresh generations of children seek out his work and his creations endure - through Hollywood movies, theatre adaptations and musical works, but still most of all through the pure magic of his writing.

In a World Book Day 1999 survey amongst 15,000 7-11 year-olds, Matilda was voted the most popular children’s book. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and The Twits are also featured in the top ten.

He once said, "I believe that the writer for children must be a jokey sort of fellow." We can remember him this way.

His Poetry:

His Books:

Published in 1943 and long unavailable, The Gremlins is the story of Gus, a British World War II fighter pilot, who during the Battle of Britain turned to look out on the wing of his plane only to see an amazing sight: a little man, no more than six inches tall with horns growing from his head, drilling a hole in the plane's wing. Gus was the first man to ever see a Gremlin, and what happened after that would change the war, and the world, forever. Bought by Walt Disney to be produced as an animated motion picture (and considered to be the first story featuring the mythical airplane sabotaging creatures known as Gremlins), the project was ultimately shelved and is reprinted here for the first time in over 60 years.

A collection of short stories. In "Taste", the stakes of a dinner-party bet reach distasteful heights; a wife serves up a new dish in "Lamb to the Slaughter"; and layers of deceit are stripped away in "Nunc Dimittis".

This volume contains 11 stories: "The Landlady", "William and Mary", "The Way up to Heaven", "Parson's Pleasure", "Mrs Bixby and the Colonel's Coat", "Royal Jelly", "Georgy Porgy", "Genesis And Catastrophe", "Edward the Conqueror", "Pig", and "The Champion of the World".

When poor James Henry Trotter loses his parents in a horrible rhinoceros accident, he is forced to live with his two wicked aunts, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker. After three years he becomes "the saddest and loneliest boy you could find." Then one day, a wizened old man in a dark-green suit gives James a bag of magic crystals. When James accidentally spills the crystals on his aunts' withered peach tree, he sets the adventure in motion. From the old tree a single peach grows, and grows, and grows some more, until finally James climbs inside the giant fruit and rolls away from his despicable aunts to a whole new life. James befriends an assortment of hilarious characters, including Grasshopper, Earthworm, Miss Spider, and Centipede--each with his or her own song to sing.

Young Charlie Bucket can’t believe his luck when he finds the very last of Mr. Willy Wonka’s Golden Tickets inside his chocolate bar. He wins the trip of a lifetime, a magical tour around Mr. Wonka’s mysterious chocolate factory. Once inside, Charlie and the other four winners—Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt, Violet Beauregarde, and Mike Teavee—witness amazing wonders: rainbow drops, lickable wallpaper, and even a chocolate waterfall. But what happens when the children, one by one, disobey Mr. Wonka?

The Gregg family loves hunting, but their eight-year-old neighbor can't stand it. After countless pleas for them to stop are ignored, she has no other choice -- she has to put her magic finger on them. Now the Greggs are a family of birds, and like it or not, they're going to find out how it feels to be on the other end of the gun.

This is a hard to fine edition. It is an omnibus collecting the contents of Someone Like You (1953) and Kiss Kiss (1960), the author's second and third short story collections. These twenty-nine stories, written over a period of sixteen years, comprise the core of Dahl's short fiction.

In the tradition of The Adventures of Peter Rabbit, this is a "garden tale" of farmer versus vermin, or vice versa. The farmers in this case are a vaguely criminal team of three stooges: "Boggis and Bunce and Bean / One fat, one short, one lean. / These horrible crooks / So different in looks / Were nonetheless equally mean." Whatever their prowess as poultry farmers, within these pages their sole objective is the extermination of our hero--the noble, the clever, the Fantastic Mr. Fox. Our loyalties are defined from the start; after all, how could you cheer for a man named Bunce who eats his doughnuts stuffed with mashed goose livers? As one might expect, the farmers in this story come out smelling like ... well, what farmers occasionally do smell like.

Picking right up where Charlie and the Chocolate Factory left off, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator continues the adventures of Charlie Bucket, his family, and Willy Wonka, the eccentric candy maker. As the book begins, our heroes are shooting into the sky in a glass elevator, headed for destinations unknown. What follows is exactly the kind of high-spirited magical madness and mayhem we've all come to expect from Willy Wonka and his creator Roald Dahl. The American space race gets a send-up, as does the President, and Charlie's family gets a second chance at childhood. Throw in the Vermicious Knids, Gnoolies, and Minusland and we once again witness pure genius.

"This is not a fairy tale. This is about real witches." So begins one of Roald Dahl's best books ever, and, ironically, it is such a great story because the premise is perfectly plausible from the outset. When the narrator's parents die in a car crash on page two , he is taken in by his cigar-smoking Norwegian grandmother, who has learned a storyteller's respect for witches and is wise to their ways.
The bond between the boy and his grandmother becomes the centerpiece of the tale--a partnership of love and understanding that survives even the boy's unfortunate transformation into a mouse. And once the two have teamed up to outwitch the witches.
Of course, there's adventure here along with Dahl's trademark cleverness and sense of the grotesque. Dahl also communicates some essential truths to children: if they smoke cigars, they'll never catch cold, and, most importantly, they should never bathe, because a clean child is far, far easier for a witch to smell than a dirty one.

If you could see with your eyes closed, how would you use your power? That's what Henry has to decide in " The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,"one of the seven stories in this extra-ordinary collection. In addition to imaginative and magical tales, this book also contains the true story of how Roald Dahl became a writer, as well as a copy of the very first nonfiction story he wrote for The Saturday Evening Post. Packed with wit and adventure, the collection is a clever mix of fantasy and reality — and a stunning showcase of Dahl's prose.

This collection of 25 short stories (written for adults) spans his career up to 1986 and contains some of the most tantalizingly evil ideas I have read in a long time. What fun it was to visit this mind in all its incarnations. From a seemingly sweet landlady, to a seemingly benevolent preacher, to a seemingly innocuous wager. That is the pattern. Things are not what they seem and Dahl makes sure to throw in a one-two punch of surprises within.

To use a Hollywoodism, I would say this is like O. Henry crossed with Stephen King. So, if you like your short stories with pepper, you can do no better than to visit the twisted world of Roald Dahl.

A collection of short stories with a twist, taken from Roald Dahl's books "Kiss Kiss" and "Someone Like You".

The wicked wit of Roald Dahl's fiction is superbly adapted in the first two seasons of Tales of the Unexpected. Premiering on British TV in 1979, this first-rate anthology series had the added advantage of Dahl himself as host, introducing each 25-minute episode from a cozy English fireside and bringing his own dark, playfully macabre sensibility to the stories that followed. In the delicious tradition of O. Henry, the author's twisted sense of irony inspired superior adaptations from several of England's finest dramatists (most notably Ronald Harwood, Oscar®-winner for The Pianist), and in turn their teleplays attracted an impressive array of high-caliber British and American actors including John Gielgud, John Mills, Joseph Cotten, Gloria Grahame, Susan George, Julie Harris, Derek Jacobi, Michael Gambon, Elaine Stritch, Joan Collins, and many more.

Some people's lives may seem dull and quiet, but occasionally circumstances drive them to lies, deceit, revenge or extraordinary ideas. Master of black comedy, Dahl gives us eight stories with devilish twists.

1980 More Tales of the Unexpected
A collection of brillian short stories: Poison, The Sound Machine, Georgy Porgy, Genesis and Catastrophe, The Hitch-hiker, The Umbrella Man, Mr Botibol, Vengeance is Mine Inc. and The Butler.

BFG? Bellowing ferret-faced golfer? Backstabbing fairy godmother? Oh, oh ... Big Friendly Giant! This BFG doesn't seem all that F at first as he creeps down a London street, snatches little Sophie out of her bed, and bounds away with her to giant land. And he's not really all that B when compared with his evil, carnivorous brethren, who bully him for being such an oddball runt. After all, he eats only disgusting snozzcumbers, and while the other Gs are snacking on little boys and girls, he's blowing happy dreams in through their windows. What kind of way is that for a G to behave?

The author puts his distinctive satirical spin on six traditional tales including "Snow White" ("From now on, Queen, you're Number Two. Snow White is prettier than you!" says the Magic Mirror) and "The Three Little Pigs." Danny the Champion of the World, originally published in 1975, tells the story of a nine-year-old boy learning the art of poaching at his beloved father's knee. With his famous wicked humor and the cunning of a big bad wolf, master storyteller and satirist Roald Dahl retells his six favorite fairy tales. Get ready for Dahl?s diabolical version of what really happened to Cinderella, Goldilocks, the Three Little Pigs, Jack and the Beanstalk, Snow White, and Little Red Riding Hood.

Matilda is an extraordinarily gifted four-year-old whose parentsa crass, dishonest used-car dealer and a self-centered, blowsy bingo addict regard her as "nothing more than a scab." Life with her beastly parents is bearable only because Matilda teaches herself to read, finds the public library, and discovers literature. Matilda loves using her lively intelligence to perpetrate daring acts of revenge on her father. This pastime she further develops when she enrolls in Crunchem Hall Primary School, whose headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, is "a fierce tyrannical monster . . . ."

Fortunately for Matilda, she has the inner resources to deal with such annoyances: astonishing intelligence, saintly patience, and an innate predilection for revenge. She warms up with some practical jokes aimed at her hapless parents, but the true test comes when she rallies in defense of her teacher, the sweet Miss Honey, against the diabolical Trunchbull. There is never doubt that Matilda will win. This wonderful story is far from predictable--the big surprise comes when Matilda discovers a new, mysterious mental power.

Unsuspecting humans get their final comeuppance in this collection of poems about mischievous and mysterious animals. In between laughs, both adult and child will see in these rhymes the folly of pretenses and the sheer joy of the ridiculous. From Stingaling the scorpion to Crocky-Wock the crocodile, Dahl's animals are nothing short of ridiculous. A clever pig with an unmentionable plan to save his own bacon and an anteater with an unusually large appetite are among the characters created by Dahl in these timeless rhymes.

In Boy, Roald Dahl recounts his days as a child growing up in England. From his years as a prankster at boarding school to his envious position as a chocolate tester for Cadbury's, Roald Dahl's boyhood was as full of excitement and the unexpected as are his world-famous, best-selling books. Packed with anecdotes some funny, some painful, all interesting this is a book that's sure to please. We spend idyllic summers in his mother's native Norway, grow weary at the boredom of his English public schools, wince at the canings administered to 7-year-old boys by 40-year-old psychopaths, even find a real live chocolate factory that gives free samples to young boys. Yet we relish every minute.

The giraffe with an infinitely expandable neck, the pelican with a magical retractable beak, and the dancing monkey are among Roald Dahl's most popular characters. Together with Billy, a small boy with a dream, they team up to make the most amazing ladderless window-cleaning company ever invented.

When Billy joins the Ladderless Window-Cleaning Company, he gets a lot more than a new job. First he makes three new friends, then it's time to get to work cleaning all 677 windows of the Duke of Hampshire's house. The Duke is not only the most wealthy man in the country, he's also the most generous. Can he make Billy's lifelong dream come true? "A captivating story and a wonderful read-aloud."

The fascinating story of Roald Dahl's life continues in "Going Solo", a marvelous evocation of the author's wartime exploits. As a pilot in WWII, Dahl had some wonderfully exciting-- and frighteningly near-death--experiences including encounters with the enemy, battles with deadly snakes, and incredible dogfights.

A new collection of Roald Dahl stories, all on a theme of country matters, featuring those wily characters Claud, Rummins and Bert, who appeared memorably in Dahl's story, "Parson's Pleasure". There are seven stories in the book, including one that has never appeared in book form before.

For the older reader, this is a collaboration of Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake whos previous successes include "The Enormous Crocodile", "The Twits", "The BFG" and "Revolting Rhymes" contains a selection of hilarious absurd rhymes.

Mr. Hoppy is in love with Mrs. Silver, but her heart belongs to Alfie, her pet tortoise. Mr. Hoppy is too shy to approach Mrs. Silver, until one day he comes up with a brilliant idea to win her heart. If Mr. Hoppy's plan works, Mrs. Silver will certainly fall in love with him. But it's going to take one hundred and forty tortoises, an ancient spell, and a little bit of magic. For years, Mr. Hoppy has leaned over his balcony rail to gaze longingly at Mrs. Silver, who lives one floor below him. But all of her attention and affection is showered upon her pet tortoise, Alfie. Although the creature seems content, his devoted owner is concerned because he has gained a mere three ounces in the 11 years she has owned him. When the distressed Mrs. Silver tells her neighbor that she will be his "slave for life" if he can find a way to make Alfie grow, the determined Mr. Hoppy devises an elaborate scheme to make her think the tortoise is growing. (Since tortoises, according to Mr. Hoppy, are backward creatures that "can only understand words that are written backwards," his exhortation to the pet begins "Esio Trot"--which is "tortoise" reversed.) It is a happy Hoppy who gets all the credit--and Mrs. Silver's hand.

This is the second of the 10 bestselling children's books of 1991. It features little Billy who lives with his mother in a small cottage. She warns him never to go into the Forest of Sin, but one day Billy secretly slips out. The author also wrote "Dirty Beasts" and "Witches".

Reverend Lee doesn't realise that his dyslexia is affecting his sermons. His parishioners are at first amused and then shocked by the garbled messages coming from the pulpit. Finally a cure is found. The Vicar must walk backwards for the rest of his life.