Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock
Roald Dahl was born in 1916 and was named after the famous Norwegian explorer, Roald
Amundsen, who successfully reached the south pole five years previously.
One of his characters, Willy Wonka was his alter ego.
While Wonka pleased children by making things in his factory, Dahl pleased them with his
imaginative and cheerful writing.
His books offer his readers a world full of creativity and pleasure, where everything
is possible.
Roald was raised by his mother (as his father died when he was three) and he inherited his
keen sense of adventure from her.
His novel “The Witches” published in 1983 contained a Norwegian grandmother character
who was also a great storyteller.
This was a tribute to his own mother, whose talent for storytelling was passed on to him.
His writing skill may also have been developed from his mother’s natural storytelling ability.
At Christmas in 1920, the farm where the Dahl family lived was put up for sale.
Roald idolised the farm and echoed the loss in his book, “James and the Giant Peach”
where at the very start of the story a small boy loses his perfect life when his parents
are eaten by an escaped rhinoceros from London Zoo.
Dahl’s childhood was full of agony and ecstasy, from the cruel teachers and unhappy school
life in a boarding school to the wonderful family holidays in Wales and Norway.
These experiences he never forgot and they were often reflected in his stories which
ranged from grotesque to ingenious.
In the early 1930s, Dahl attended Repton School in Derbyshire, known for arts and literature
and boasting several novelists and poets as former students.
Dahl was influenced by his English teacher and encouraged to use imaginative language
but written in short, clear and punctually correct sentences.
Dahl’s tactic to keep older and nastier boys at bay was to have a wicked and vulgar
sense of humour.
By his mid teenage years he had grown to six foot five inches tall which helped him to
excel in certain sports and meant he was left alone by the unpleasant pupils in his last
couple of years at school.
After passing his exams and leaving school, Dahl wanted some adventure.
He travelled on the RMS Nova Scotia as a member of the Public School Exploring Society to
Newfoundland as part of a four week trek across the unexplored island off the coast of Canada.
The expedition implemented some strong character building and culminated in a twenty-day march
through bogs and swamps carrying up to 100 pounds on their backs.
Upon completion of the trip, Dahl took a job for a Petroleum company (later becoming part
of Royal Dutch Shell).
He worked in an office in London for two years and then somewhere else in England before
finally after four years at the company being posted to Africa.
Prior to being sent to Kenya, Dahl spent time away from work developing photographs, reading
novels and dabbled in writing comic sketches.
Aged 22, his time in Africa was spent supplying oil to various customers there, mainly for
farm equipment but also for any aviation requirements.
He was sent to various places in Kenya and then to what is now Tanzania.
He lived in luxury and spent much of his free time playing sports and socialising and drinking
at cocktail parties.
Whilst in Africa, the Second World War had begun.
Dahl enlisted as a Special Constable and was in charge of a group of native soldiers.
Their job was to arrest any fleeing German nationals and escort them to the British internment
camps that had been built.
As more soldiers arrived after the outbreak of war, Dahl dreamt of seeing more of Africa
and decided to join the Royal Air Force as a pilot.
He travelled to Nairobi, passed his medical and began his training program.
After 6 weeks and 50 hours of flying time, he transferred to Iraq to complete his pilot
training.
Six months later in September 1940 he was sent to the desert in Egypt to see his first
action in the air.
Dahl flew a Gloster Gladiator, which was the last biplane still being used by the RAF.
He was ordered to fly from Egypt to Libya but was unable to locate the airstrip and
landed in the desert, hitting a boulder and fracturing his skull.
He was found later that night barely conscious, his overalls burnt from the flames and his
face disfigured from the impact.
After suffering blindness due to the swelling for nearly a month, Dahl slowly recovered
in hospital.
By February 1941 he was ready for duty and was sent to an RAF base in Cairo.
Dahl’s experiences in the air were touched on in his books.
He found flying to be unfamiliar and almost mystical, with the sky being an alternative
world.
In his book, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” Charlie flies high over the factory
inside a great glass elevator and has a sense of epiphany when Willy Wonka hands over his
world to him.
Roald Dahl had much the same feeling when encountering the glory of flight for the first
time.
Later in 1941, Dahl joined his squadron that now flew in Greece.
He would now be piloting a Hurricane and in April shot down his first enemy plane.
He continued to patrol the skies until after ten days in Greece, was evacuated back to
Egypt.
Later the headaches he was still suffering became worse and he started blacking out.
Dahl was no longer able to fly and after three years away, returned to England, but his 32
days as an active fighter pilot gave him something to write about.
While attending a meal in a club, Dahl met a member of parliament who was impressed with
his conversation and stories and offered Dahl a job in the British embassy in Washington
D.C., USA.
He disliked his job which was to give pro-British speeches to try and tie the Americans into
the British war effort.
However, after meeting a fellow Brit who was asked to write about Dahl’s experiences,
Dahl offered to write them himself and send them to him.
He did and was paid $300 for the story which appeared in the newspaper and signalled the
start of his writing career.
What he lacked in factual accuracy he made up for with an eye for peculiar detail and
invention.
He continued to write, composing stories about gremlins in aeroplanes causing mechanical
problems as if they were real creatures.
One of his stories was forwarded to Disney who were interested in turning it into a feature
film.
He went to Hollywood and the Walt Disney Company did eventually publish a book in 1943 called
“The Gremlins” which was a success, but the movie was never made.
The president’s wife was a big fan of the book and Mrs Roosevelt invited Dahl over for
dinner at the White House.
He gave all the royalties from the book to charity, except for the cost of a set of false
teeth made out of gold and platinum as he had had most of his teeth replaced with artificial
replacements when he was 21.
Most of Roald Dahl’s early stories were about flying and wartime but during the war
he was also involved in secret intelligence, working in a part of MI6 when in Washington
with other officers such as David Ogilvy, who would become the advertising mogul and
Ian Fleming, who would become the author of the James Bond books.
After the war and after four years in America, Dahl returned again to England in 1946 and
chose to live in the countryside.
His lust for adventure had subsided and he was adamant on becoming a fulltime writer.
He dabbled in some journalism and creepy short stories as well as writing novels but was
not overly successful and suffered financial difficulties at times, so he returned across
the Atlantic to New York City.
He met an American actress called Patricia Neil and they married in 1953.
They went on to have five children.
Dahl gave up aspirations of being a novelist and focused on short stories.
His stories were taking longer and longer to write so he was convinced by his literary
agent to try writing a story for children.
After initially rejecting the idea, he eventually followed his destiny and wrote “James and
the Giant Peach” in 1961, followed by many, many more.
A year before his latest book was released, Dahl’s son Theo, who was four months old
at the time, was hit by a cab whilst being pushed in a pram and his skull was crushed
against a bus.
A valve was fitted to drain the fluid from his brain in hospital but it kept becoming
blocked.
Dahl immediately stopped writing, learnt about the intricacies of the problem and invented
a new valve with two friends – a neurosurgeon and a toymaker.
The superior valve cost less than a third of the price of the current solution as they
refused to make any money from it and was successfully used on nearly three thousand
children.
Long after this medical involvement, Dahl wrote “George’s Marvellous Medicine”
in 1981.
Dahl and his family returned to a cottage in England which had an annex built on the
side of it which he used as his writing hut.
He began to write his next book, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” before tragedy
struck again.
His daughter Olivia died from Measles aged seven.
Dahl went on to dedicate the book “The BFG” to his daughter.
A third catastrophe hit the family when his wife suffered three strokes in 1965, aged
39.
Dahl supervised and worked with her constantly during her rehabilitation to help her walk
and talk again.
She even returned to acting, receiving an Oscar nomination in 1968.
After a five-year gap, Dahl returned to children’s stories and “Fantastic Mr. Fox” was published
in 1970.
It became an instant bestseller.
Dahl embarked on a ten year affair that eventually ended in divorce and him remarrying but during
this time he continued to produce books.
“Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator” and “Danny, the Champion of the World”
were both published in the 70s.
Six more followed in the 1980s despite Dahl suffering illness through much of the decade.
His books became more and more successful as the years went on.
Like one of his most loved characters, The Big Friendly Giant, Dahl often said words
that didn’t come out as intended.
He had quarrels with many people ranging from friends and family to publishing companies.
Even guests at formal functions couldn’t escape his often argumentative conversations.
However, his army of young fans adored his literary work and he will be remembered as
one of the world’s greatest ever storytellers.