Roald Dahl was born in Llandaff Cardiff, Wales in 1916, to Norwegian parents, Harald Dahl and Sofie Magdalene Dahl (née Hesselberg). Dahl's family had moved from Norway and settled in Cardiff in the 1880s. Roald was named after the polar explorer Roald Amundsen, a national hero in Norway at the time. He spoke Norwegian at home with his parents and sisters. Dahl and his sisters were christened at the Norwegian Church, Cardiff, where their parents worshipped.
In 1920, when Roald was four, his seven-year-old sister, Astri, died from appendicitis. About a month later, his father died of pneumonia at the age of 57, following grief from his daughter's death. Dahl's mother, however, decided not to return to Norway to live with her relatives, but to remain in Wales since it had been her husband's wish to have their children educated in British schools.
Dahl first attended The Cathedral School, Llandaff. At the age of eight, he and four of his friends were caned by the headmaster after putting a dead mouse in a jar of sweets at the local sweet shop, which was owned by a "mean and loathsome" old woman called Mrs. Pratchett (wife of blacksmith David Pratchett). This was known amongst the five boys as the "Great Mouse Plot of 1924". This was Roald's own idea.
Thereafter, he was sent to several boarding schools in England, including Saint Peter's in Weston-super-Mare. His parents had wanted Roald to be educated at a British public school and at the time, due to a then regular boat link across the Bristol Channel, this proved to be the nearest. His time at Saint Peter's was an unpleasant experience for him. He was very homesick and wrote to his mother almost every day, but never revealed to her his unhappiness, being under the pressure of school censorship. Only when she died did he find out that she had saved every single one of his letters, in small bundles held together with green tape. He later attended Repton School in Derbyshire, where, according to his novel Boy, a friend named Michael was viciously caned by Geoffrey Fisher, the man who later became the Archbishop of Canterbury. This caused Dahl to "have doubts about religion and even about God".[1]
According to David Hein, in his 2008 book Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury 1945-1961, "Dahl's biographer, Jeremy Treglown, has pointed out, however, that the incident Dahl describes took place in May 1933, one year after Fisher left Repton."
Dahl was very tall, reaching 6'6" (1.98m) in adult life,[2] and he was good at sports, being made captain of the school Fives and Squash teams, and also playing for the football team. This helped his popularity. He developed an interest in photography. During his years there, Cadbury, a chocolate company, would occasionally send boxes of new chocolates to the school to be tested by the pupils. Dahl himself apparently used to dream of inventing a new chocolate bar that would win the praise of Mr. Cadbury himself, and this proved the inspiration for him to write his third book for children, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Throughout his childhood and adolescent years, Dahl spent his summer holidays in his parents' native Norway, mostly enjoying the fjords. His childhood is the subject of his autobiographical work, Boy: Tales of Childhood.
After finishing his schooling, he spent three weeks hiking through Newfoundland with a group called the Public Schools' Exploring Society (now known as BSES Expeditions). In July 1934, he joined the Shell Petroleum Company.
Following two years of training in the UK, he was transferred to Dar-es-Salaam, Tanganyika (now Tanzania). Along with the only two other Shell employees in the entire territory, he lived in luxury in the Shell House outside Dar-es-Salaam, with a cook and personal servants. While out on assignments supplying oil to customers across Tanganyika, he encountered black mambas and lions, amongst other wildlife.[1]
Postwar life
[edit] Family
Dahl married American actress Patricia Neal on 2 July 1953 at Trinity Church in New York City. Their marriage lasted for 30 years and they had five children: Olivia (who died of measles encephalitis, aged seven), Tessa, Theo, Ophelia, and Lucy. He dedicated The BFG to Olivia.
When he was four months old, Theo Dahl was severely injured when his baby carriage was hit by a taxi in New York City. For a time, he suffered from hydrocephalus, and as a result, his father became involved in the development of what became known as the "Wade-Dahl-Till" (or WDT) valve, a device to alleviate the condition.[8][9]
In 1965, Neal suffered three burst cerebral aneurysms while pregnant with their fifth child, Lucy; Dahl took control of her rehabilitation and she eventually relearned to talk and walk.[10] They were divorced in 1983 following a turbulent marriage, and he subsequently married Felicity ("Liccy") d'Abreu Crosland (born 12 December 1938), who was 22 years his junior.
Ophelia Dahl is director and co-founder (with doctor Paul Farmer) of Partners in Health, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing health care to some of the most impoverished communities in the world. Lucy Dahl is a screenwriter in Los Angeles. Tessa's daughter Sophie Dahl (who was the inspiration for Sophie, the main character in her grandfather's book The BFG) is a model and author who remembers Roald Dahl as "a very difficult man – very strong, very dominant ... not unlike the father of the Mitford sisters sort of roaring round the house with these very loud opinions, banning certain types – foppish boys, you know – from coming round."
[edit] Death and legacy
Roald Dahl died in November 1990 at the age of 74 of a rare blood disease, myelodysplastic anaemia (sometimes called "pre-leukemia"), at his home, Gipsy House in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, and was buried in the cemetery at the parish church of Saints Peter and Paul. According to his granddaughter, the family gave him a "sort of Viking funeral". He was buried with his snooker cues, some very good burgundy, chocolates, HB pencils and a power saw. In his honour, the Roald Dahl Children's Gallery was opened at Buckinghamshire County Museum in nearby Aylesbury.
In 2002, one of Cardiff's modern landmarks, the historic Oval Basin plaza, was re-christened "Roald Dahl Plass". "Plass" means plaza in Norwegian, a nod to the acclaimed late writer's Norwegian roots. There have also been calls from the public for a permanent statue of him to be erected in the city.
Dahl's charitable commitments in the fields of neurology, haematology and literacy have been continued by his widow since his death, through the Roald Dahl Foundation. In June 2005, the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre opened in Great Missenden to celebrate the work of Roald Dahl and advance his work in literacy.
In 2008, the U.K. charity Booktrust and Children's Laureate Michael Rosen inaugurated The Roald Dahl Funny Prize, an annual award to authors of humorous children's fiction.[11]