Age, Biography, and Wiki
Roald Dahl was born on September 13, 1916, in Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales, to Norwegian parents. He passed away on November 23, 1990, at the age of 74, from a rare blood cancer. Dahl’s life was marked by a blend of adventurous experiences—he served as a British fighter pilot during World War II—and prolific literary output. His career spanned novels, short stories, poetry, and screenwriting, and he is best known for children’s classics like Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and Fantastic Mr. Fox.
His Wikipedia page details his journey from wartime service to global literary fame, highlighting his unique storytelling style and cultural impact.
| Occupation | Screenwriter |
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| Date of Birth | 13 September 1916 |
| Age | 108 Years |
| Birth Place | Cardiff, Wales |
| Horoscope | Virgo |
| Country | England |
| Date of death | 23 November, 1990 |
| Died Place | Oxford, England |
Height, Weight & Measurements
Public records and biographies rarely mention Roald Dahl’s precise height, weight, or body measurements. Most sources focus on his literary achievements rather than his physical attributes, a common trend for authors of his era.
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Dating & Relationship Status
Roald Dahl was married twice. His first marriage was to actress Patricia Neal in 1953; the couple had several children before divorcing in 1983. After their split, Dahl began an 11-year affair with film producer Felicity d'Abreu Crosland, whom he eventually married in 1983 (some sources suggest the relationship began in 1972 and they married after his divorce from Neal in 1983). After Dahl’s death in 1990, Felicity inherited the majority of his estate and was instrumental in managing his legacy.
Dahl's father, a wealthy shipbroker and self-made man, had emigrated to Britain from Sarpsborg, Norway and settled in Cardiff in the 1880s with his first wife, Frenchwoman Marie Beaurin-Gresser. They had two children together (Ellen Marguerite and Louis) before her death in 1907. Roald's mother belonged to a well-established Norwegian family of lawyers, priests in the state church and wealthy merchants and estate owners, and emigrated to Britain when she married his father in 1911. Dahl was named after Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen. His first language was Norwegian, which he spoke at home with his parents and his sisters Astri, Alfhild, and Else. The children were raised in Norway's Lutheran state church, the Church of Norway, and were baptised at the Norwegian Church, Cardiff. His maternal grandmother Ellen Wallace was a granddaughter of the member of parliament Georg Wallace and a descendant of an early 18th-century Scottish immigrant to Norway.
Dahl's sister Astri died from appendicitis at age seven in 1920 when Dahl was three years old, and his father died of pneumonia at age 57 several weeks later. Upon his death, Harald Dahl left a fortune assessed for probate of £158,917 10s. 0d. (equivalent to £0 in ). Dahl's mother decided to remain in Wales instead of returning to Norway to live with relatives, as her husband had wanted their children to be educated in English schools, which he considered the world's best. When he was six years old, Dahl met his idol Beatrix Potter, author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit featuring the mischievous Peter Rabbit, the first licensed fictional character. The meeting, which took place at Potter's home, Hill Top in the Lake District, north west England, was dramatised in the 2020 television film, Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse.
Dahl transferred to St Peter's boarding school in Weston-super-Mare. His parents had wanted him to be educated at an English public school, and this proved to be the nearest because of the regular ferry link across the Bristol Channel. Dahl's time at St Peter's was unpleasant; he was very homesick and wrote to his mother every week but never revealed his unhappiness to her. After her death in 1967, he learned that she had saved every one of his letters; they were broadcast in abridged form as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week in 2016 to mark the centenary of his birth. Dahl wrote about his time at St Peter's in his autobiography Boy: Tales of Childhood. Excelling at conkers—a traditional autumnal children's game in Britain and Ireland played using the seeds of horse chestnut trees—Dahl recollected, "at the ages of eight, nine and ten, conkers brought sunshine to our lives during the dreary autumn term".
Throughout his childhood and adolescent years, Dahl spent most of his summer holidays with his mother's family in Norway. He wrote about many happy memories from those visits in Boy: Tales of Childhood, such as when he replaced the tobacco in his half-sister's fiancé's pipe with goat droppings. He noted only one unhappy memory of his holidays in Norway: at around the age of eight, he had to have his adenoids removed by a doctor. His childhood and first job selling kerosene in Midsomer Norton and surrounding villages in Somerset are subjects in Boy: Tales of Childhood.
He was assigned to No. 80 Squadron RAF, flying obsolete Gloster Gladiators, the last biplane fighter aircraft used by the RAF. Dahl was surprised to find that he would not receive any specialised training in aerial combat or in flying Gladiators. On 19 September 1940, Dahl and another pilot were ordered to fly their Gladiators by stages from Abu Sueir (near Ismailia, in Egypt) to 80 Squadron's forward airstrip 30 mi south of Mersa Matruh. On the final leg, they could not find the airstrip and, running low on fuel and with night approaching, Dahl was forced to attempt a landing in the desert. The undercarriage hit a boulder and the aircraft crashed. Dahl's skull was fractured and his nose was smashed; he was temporarily blinded. He managed to drag himself away from the wreckage and lost consciousness. His colleague, Douglas McDonald, had landed safely and was able to comfort Dahl until they were rescued. He wrote about the crash in his first published work. Dahl came to believe that the head injury he sustained in the crash resulted in his creative genius. Solomon, Tom (2016), Roald Dahl's Marvellous Medicine, chapter 5, "A Lucky Piece of Cake": He was then sent to the USA, where a chance encounter with C. S. Forester encouraged him to try writing a story about flying, as recounted in his autobiographical story "Lucky Break". Solomon: "Dahl liked to say his writing career was started by the monumental bash on the head when his plane came down. He had heard that brain injuries can sometimes unleash people’s creative abilities, and fancied the idea that his head trauma had turned ‘a promising oil executive with no literary talents’ into a best-selling author. But was he right? Certainly there are well-described cases of people with no artistic inclinations at all whose brain injuries released incredible unknown creative potential...I do not think the syndrome applies to Dahl, though, because he showed lots of literary potential even before the accident. The weekly letters he wrote home to his mother from boarding school are packed full of entertaining stories, and vivid descriptions...Despite, or maybe even because of these reports, Dahl continued to dabble in writing as a young man...So long before the plane crash I believe Dahl had many of the ingredients that would make him the great writer he was to become. He loved literature, had a keen eye for detail and enjoyed writing mischievous tales. Although I do not think Dahl had acquired savant syndrome, could the plane crash have contributed to his writing in some other way? I’d say the answer is yes, because, for example, it may well be that the head trauma caused mild damage to the frontal lobes of Dahl’s brain, affecting his character and personality, and releasing him from some of the inbuilt inhibitions that normally hold people back."
Despite this somewhat light-hearted account, Dahl also noted that, ultimately, Vichy forces killed four of the nine Hurricane pilots in his squadron. Describing the Vichy forces as "disgusting", he stated that "... thousands of lives were lost, and I for one have never forgiven the Vichy French for the unnecessary slaughter they caused." When he began to get severe headaches that caused him to black out, he was invalided home to Britain where he stayed with his mother in Buckinghamshire. Although at this time Dahl was only a pilot officer on probation, in September 1941 he was simultaneously confirmed as a pilot officer and promoted to war substantive flying officer.
* Chantal Sophia "Tessa" (born 1957), who became an author, and mother of author, cookbook writer and former model Sophie Dahl (after whom Sophie in The BFG is named);
In 1965, Dahl's wife Patricia Neal suffered three burst cerebral aneurysms while pregnant with their fifth child, Lucy. Dahl took control of her rehabilitation over the next months; Neal had to re-learn to talk and walk, but she managed to return to her acting career. This period of their lives was dramatised in the film The Patricia Neal Story (1981), in which the couple were played by Glenda Jackson and Dirk Bogarde.
In 1972, Roald Dahl met Felicity d'Abreu Crosland, niece of Lt.-Col. Francis D'Abreu who was married to Margaret Bowes Lyon, the first cousin of the Queen Mother, while Felicity was working as a set designer on an advert for Maxim coffee with the author's then wife, Patricia Neal. Soon after the pair were introduced, they began an 11-year affair. In 1983 Neal and Dahl divorced and Dahl married Felicity, at Brixton Town Hall, south London. Felicity (known as Liccy) gave up her job and moved into Gipsy House, Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire, which had been Dahl's home since 1954.
In the 1986 New Years Honours List, Dahl was offered an appointment to Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), but turned it down. He reportedly wanted a knighthood so that his wife would be Lady Dahl. Dahl's last significant involvement in medical charities during his lifetime was with dyslexia. In 1990, the year which saw the UN launch International Literacy Year, Dahl assisted with the British Dyslexia Association's Awareness Campaign. That year saw Dahl write one of his last children's books, The Vicar of Nibbleswicke, which features a vicar who has a fictitious form of dyslexia that causes him to pronounce words backwards. Called "a comic tale in the best Dahl tradition of craziness" by Waterstones, Dahl donated the rights of the book to the Dyslexia Institute in London.
Dahl acquired a traditional Romanichal vardo in the 1960s, and the family used it as a playhouse for his children at home in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire. He later used the vardo as a writing room, where he wrote Danny, the Champion of the World in 1975. Dahl incorporated a similar caravan into the main plot of the book, where the young English boy, Danny, and his father, William (played by Jeremy Irons in the film adaptation) live in a vardo. Many other scenes and characters from Great Missenden are reflected in his work. For example, the village library was the inspiration for Mrs Phelps' library in Matilda, where the title character devours classic literature by the age of four.
Some of Dahl's short stories are supposed to be extracts from the diary of his (fictional) Uncle Oswald, a rich gentleman whose sexual exploits form the subject of these stories. In his novel My Uncle Oswald, the uncle engages a temptress to seduce 20th century geniuses and royalty with a love potion secretly added to chocolate truffles made by Dahl's favourite chocolate shop, Prestat of Piccadilly, London. Memories with Food at Gipsy House, written with his wife Felicity and published posthumously in 1991, was a mixture of recipes, family reminiscences and Dahl's musings on favourite subjects such as chocolate, onions and claret.
Dahl also features characters who are very fat, usually children. Augustus Gloop, Bruce Bogtrotter and Bruno Jenkins are a few of these characters, although an enormous woman named Aunt Sponge features in James and the Giant Peach and the nasty farmer Boggis in Fantastic Mr Fox is an enormously fat character. All of these characters (with the possible exception of Bruce Bogtrotter) are either villains or simply unpleasant gluttons. They are usually punished for this: Augustus Gloop drinks from Willy Wonka's chocolate river, disregarding the adults who tell him not to, and falls in, getting sucked up a pipe and nearly being turned into fudge. In Matilda, Bruce Bogtrotter steals cake from the evil headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, and is forced to eat a gigantic chocolate cake in front of the school; when he unexpectedly succeeds at this, Trunchbull smashes the empty plate over his head. In The Witches, Bruno Jenkins is lured by the witches (whose leader is the Grand High Witch) into their convention with the promise of chocolate, before they turn him into a mouse. Aunt Sponge is flattened by a giant peach. When Dahl was a boy his mother used to tell him and his sisters tales about trolls and other mythical Norwegian creatures, and some of his children's books contain references or elements inspired by these stories, such as the giants in The BFG, the fox family in Fantastic Mr Fox and the trolls in The Minpins.
Receiving the 1983 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, Dahl encouraged his children and his readers to let their imagination run free. His daughter Lucy stated "his spirit was so large and so big he taught us to believe in magic." She said her father later told her that if they had simply said goodnight after a bedtime story, he assumed it wasn't a good idea. But if they begged him to continue, he knew he was on to something, and the story would sometimes turn into a book.
In 2023, Puffin Books, which holds the rights to all Dahl's children's books, published editions which included hundreds of revisions to the text at the advice of sensitivity readers. Changes included the use of gender-neutral words and phrases such as "parents" or "siblings" rather than "boys and girls", "mothers and fathers", the word "fat" being replaced with terms such as "enormous" or "large", and words like "crazy" and "mad" were regularly removed. The move was supported by a number of authors, including Society of Authors chair Joanne Harris and Diego Jourdan Pereira at Writer's Digest, but it drew many more critical responses. Several public figures, including then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and author Salman Rushdie, spoke out against the changes. It was reported that when Dahl was alive, he had spoken out very strongly against any changes ever being made to any of his books. On 23 February 2023, Puffin announced it would release an unedited selection of Dahl's children's books as 'The Roald Dahl Classic Collection', stating, "We've listened to the debate over the past week which has reaffirmed the extraordinary power of Roald Dahl's books" and "recognise the importance of keeping Dahl's classic texts in print".
Dahl liked ghost stories, and claimed that Trolls by Jonas Lie was one of the finest ghost stories ever written. While he was still a youngster, his mother, Sofie Dahl, related traditional Norwegian myths and legends from her native homeland to Dahl and his sisters. Dahl always maintained that his mother and her stories had a strong influence on his writing. In one interview, he mentioned: "She was a great teller of tales. Her memory was prodigious and nothing that ever happened to her in her life was forgotten." When Dahl started writing and publishing his famous books for children, he included a grandmother character in The Witches, and later said that she was based directly on his own mother as a tribute.
Dahl's charitable commitments in the fields of neurology, haematology and literacy during his life have been continued by his widow since his death, through Roald Dahl's Marvellous Children's Charity, formerly known as the Roald Dahl Foundation. The charity provides care and support to seriously ill children and young people throughout Britain. In June 2005, the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in the author's home village Great Missenden was officially opened by Cherie Blair, wife of then British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to celebrate the work of Roald Dahl and advance his work in literacy education. Over 50,000 visitors from abroad, mainly from Australia, Japan, the United States and Germany, travel to the village museum every year.
Regarded as "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century", Dahl was named by The Times one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. He ranks amongst the world's best-selling fiction authors with sales estimated at over 300 million, and his books have been published in 63 languages. In 2000, Dahl topped the list of Britain's favourite authors. In 2003, four books by Dahl, led by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at number 35, ranked among the Top 100 in The Big Read, a survey of the British public by the BBC to determine the "nation's best-loved novel" of all time. In surveys of British teachers, parents and students, Dahl is frequently ranked the best children's writer. He won the first three Australian BILBY Younger Readers Award; for Matilda, The BFG, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In a 2006 list for the Royal Society of Literature, Harry Potter creator J. K. Rowling named Charlie and the Chocolate Factory one of her top ten books every child should read. Critics have commented on the similarities between the Dursley family from Harry Potter and the nightmarish guardians seen in many of Dahl's books, such as Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker from James and the Giant Peach, Grandma from George's Marvellous Medicine, and the Wormwoods from Matilda. Barry Cunningham, who as publisher of Bloomsbury signed Rowling, cited his experiences travelling with Dahl in promotional book tours of the UK as helping him see the potential of Rowling's work, stating, "I think it was because I didn't come from a traditional background. I'd come from marketing and promotion. I'd seen how children relate to books". In 2012, Matilda was ranked number 30 among all-time best children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a monthly with primarily US audience. The Top 100 included four books by Dahl, more than any other writer. The American magazine Time named three Dahl books in its list of the 100 Best Young-Adult Books of All Time, more than any other author. Dahl is one of the most borrowed authors in British libraries.
| Parents | |
| Husband | Patricia Neal (m. 1953-1983) Felicity Crosland (m. 1983) |
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Net Worth and Salary
At the time of his death in 1990, Roald Dahl’s net worth was estimated between $3.75 million and $20 million, depending on the source, with $10 million often cited as a middle ground. Adjusted for inflation, the lower estimate would be approximately $6.75 million in today’s dollars.
However, the real financial value of Dahl’s legacy lies in the ongoing earnings from his intellectual property. As of 2018, the estate was reportedly generating annual pre-tax profits of about $17 million from book sales, film and TV adaptations, merchandise, and licensing deals.
In 2021, Netflix acquired the Roald Dahl Story Company for more than £500 million (about $686 million), significantly boosting the estate’s value and ensuring continued revenue from new adaptations and global distribution.
Coming from war-starved Britain (in what was a wartime period of rationing in the United Kingdom), Dahl was amazed by the wealth of food and amenities to be had in North America. Arriving in Washington a week later, Dahl found he liked the atmosphere of the US capital. He shared a house with another attaché at 1610 34th Street, NW, in Georgetown. But after ten days in his new posting, Dahl strongly disliked it, feeling he had taken on "a most ungodly unimportant job". He later explained, "I'd just come from the war. People were getting killed. I had been flying around, seeing horrible things. Now, almost instantly, I found myself in the middle of a pre-war cocktail party in America."
Career, Business, and Investments
Roald Dahl’s career began with his wartime service, after which he turned to writing short stories and novels. He authored at least 36 books, many of which have become beloved classics in children’s literature. His stories have been adapted into numerous successful films, stage productions, and television series, including Matilda the Musical (2022), The Witches, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Fantastic Mr. Fox.
After his death, his estate continued to manage and expand his intellectual property. The Roald Dahl Story Company, overseen by his widow and children, has been instrumental in negotiating major deals, most notably with Netflix, which acquired the animated rights to 16 Dahl books in 2018 for a reported $1 billion, and then the full company in 2021 for $500–686 million.
Dahl’s contributions to charity, especially in the fields of hematology, neurology, and literacy, are also noteworthy, with his estate continuing these philanthropic efforts through the Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity.
During his years at Repton, the Cadbury chocolate company occasionally sent boxes of new chocolates to the school to be tested by the pupils. Dahl dreamt of inventing a new chocolate bar that would win the praise of Mr Cadbury himself; this inspired him in writing his third children's book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and to refer to chocolate in other children's books.
In July 1934, Dahl joined the Shell Petroleum Company. Following four years of training in the United Kingdom, he was assigned first to Mombasa, Kenya, then to Dar es Salaam in the British colony of Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania). Dahl explains in his autobiography Going Solo that only three young Englishmen ran the Shell company in the territory, of which he was the youngest and junior. 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 mamba snakes and lions, among other wildlife.
This work introduced Dahl to espionage and the activities of the Canadian spymaster William Stephenson, known by the codename "Intrepid." During the war, Dahl supplied intelligence from Washington to Prime Minister Winston Churchill. As Dahl later said: "My job was to try to help Winston to get on with FDR, and tell Winston what was in the old boy's mind." Dahl also supplied intelligence to Stephenson and his organisation, known as British Security Coordination, which was part of MI6. Dahl was once sent back to Britain by British Embassy officials, supposedly for misconduct—"I got booted out by the big boys", he said. Stephenson promptly sent him back to Washington—with a promotion to wing commander rank. Toward the end of the war, Dahl wrote some of the history of the secret organisation; he and Stephenson remained friends for decades after the war.
Dahl's children's works are usually told from the point of view of a child. They typically involve adult villains who hate and mistreat children, and feature at least one "good" adult to counteract the villain(s). These stock characters are possibly a reference to the abuse that Dahl stated that he experienced in the boarding schools he attended. In a biography of Dahl, Matthew Dennison wrote that "his writing frequently included protests against unfairness". Dahl's books see the triumph of the child; children's book critic Amanda Craig said, "He was unequivocal that it is the good, young and kind who triumph over the old, greedy and the wicked." Anna Leskiewicz in The Telegraph wrote, "It's often suggested that Dahl's lasting appeal is a result of his exceptional talent for wriggling his way into children's fantasies and fears, and laying them out on the page with anarchic delight. Adult villains are drawn in terrifying detail, before they are exposed as liars and hypocrites, and brought tumbling down with retributive justice, either by a sudden magic or the superior acuity of the children they mistreat."
In 2012, Dahl was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork—the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover—to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life he most admires. In 2016 Dahl's enduring popularity was proved by his ranking in Amazon's the top five best-selling children's authors on the online store over the last year, looking at sales in print and on the Kindle store. In a 2017 UK poll of the greatest authors, songwriters, artists and photographers, Dahl was named the greatest storyteller of all time, ranking ahead of Dickens, Shakespeare, Rowling and Spielberg. In 2017, the airline Norwegian announced Dahl's image would appear on the tail fin one of their Boeing 737-800 aircraft. He is one of the company's six "British tail fin heroes", joining Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, England World Cup winner Bobby Moore, novelist Jane Austen, pioneering pilot Amy Johnson and aviation entrepreneur Freddie Laker.
Social Network
Roald Dahl lived before the era of social media platforms. However, his legacy is widely celebrated online through fan groups, literary forums, and official social media accounts managed by the Roald Dahl Story Company and his estate. These platforms keep his stories alive for new generations and promote new adaptations and products.
Dahl's short stories are known for their unexpected endings, and his children's books for their unsentimental, macabre, often darkly comic mood, featuring villainous adult enemies of the child characters. His children's books champion the kindhearted and feature an underlying warm sentiment. His works for children include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG, The Twits, George's Marvellous Medicine and Danny, the Champion of the World. His works for older audiences include the short story collections Tales of the Unexpected and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More.
Dahl was rescued and taken to a first-aid post in Mersa Matruh, where he regained consciousness, but not his sight. He remained blind for six weeks due to massive swelling of the brain. He was transported by train to the Royal Navy hospital in Alexandria. There he fell in and out of love with a nurse, Mary Welland. An RAF inquiry into the crash revealed that the location to which he had been told to fly was completely wrong, and he had mistakenly been sent instead into the no man's land between the Allied and Italian forces.
At this time Dahl met the noted British novelist C. S. Forester, who was also working to aid the British war effort. Forester worked for the British Ministry of Information and was writing propaganda for the Allied cause, mainly for American consumption. The Saturday Evening Post had asked Forester to write a story based on Dahl's flying experiences; Forester asked Dahl to write down some RAF anecdotes so that he could shape them into a story. After Forester read what Dahl had given him, he decided to publish the story exactly as Dahl had written it. In reality a number of changes were made to the original manuscript before publication. He originally titled the article as "A Piece of Cake" but the magazine changed it to "Shot Down Over Libya" to make it sound more dramatic, although Dahl had not been shot down; it was published on 1 August 1942 issue of the Post. Dahl was promoted to flight lieutenant (war-substantive) in August 1942. Later he worked with such other well-known British officers as Ian Fleming (who later published the popular James Bond series) and David Ogilvy, promoting Britain's interests and message in the US and combating the "America First" movement.
Upon the war's conclusion, Dahl held the rank of a temporary wing commander (substantive flight lieutenant). Owing to the severity of his injuries from the 1940 accident, he was pronounced unfit for further service and was invalided out of the RAF in August 1946. He left the service with the substantive rank of squadron leader. His record of five aerial victories, qualifying him as a flying ace, has been confirmed by post-war research and cross-referenced in Axis records. It is possible that he shot down more aircraft, for example on 20 April 1941 when the Germans lost several aircraft.
In August 1983, Dahl reviewed Australian author Tony Clifton's God Cried, a picture book about the siege of West Beirut by the Israeli army during the 1982 Lebanon War. The article, in which Dahl stated the Jews had never "switched so rapidly from much-pitied victims to barbarous murderers", appeared in the Literary Review and was the subject of media comment and criticism at the time. Dahl wrote that Clifton's book would make readers "violently anti-Israeli", saying, "I am not anti-Semitic. I am anti-Israel." In 1990, Dahl spoke again on the Lebanon invasion, stating "they killed 22,000 civilians when they bombed Beirut. It was very much hushed up in the newspapers because they are primarily Jewish-owned. I'm certainly anti-Israeli and I've become antisemitic in as much as that you get a Jewish person in another country like England strongly supporting Zionism. I think they should see both sides. It's the same old thing: we all know about Jews and the rest of it. There aren't any non-Jewish publishers anywhere, they control the media—jolly clever thing to do". His comments invoked responses from Jewish colleagues and friends, with the philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin, stating, "I thought he might say anything. Could have been pro-Arab or pro-Jew. There was no consistent line. He was a man who followed whims, which meant he would blow up in one direction, so to speak", while Amelia Foster, Jewish director of the Roald Dahl Museum in Great Missenden, said, "He had a childish reaction to what was going on in Israel. Dahl wanted to provoke, as he always provoked at dinner." As a consequence of his comments, in 2014, the Royal Mint decided not to produce a coin to commemorate the centenary of Dahl's birth. In 2020, Dahl's family published a statement on the official Roald Dahl website apologising for his antisemitism.
Dahl's first published work, inspired by a meeting with C. S. Forester, was "A Piece of Cake", on 1 August 1942. The story, about his wartime adventures, was bought by The Saturday Evening Post for US$1,000 and published under the title "Shot Down Over Libya".
His first children's book was The Gremlins, published in 1943, about mischievous little creatures that were part of Royal Air Force folklore. The RAF pilots blamed the gremlins for all the problems with the aircraft. The protagonist Gus—an RAF pilot, like Dahl—joins forces with the gremlins against a common enemy, Hitler and the Nazis. While at the British Embassy in Washington, Dahl sent a copy to the First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who read it to her grandchildren, and the book was commissioned by Walt Disney for a film that was never made. Dahl went on to write some of the best-loved children's stories of the 20th century, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG, The Twits and George's Marvellous Medicine.
Dahl also had a successful parallel career as the writer of macabre adult short stories, which often blended humour and innocence with surprising plot twists. The Mystery Writers of America presented Dahl with three Edgar Awards for his work, and many were originally written for American magazines such as Collier's ("The Collector's Item" was Collier's Star Story of the week for 4 September 1948), Ladies' Home Journal, Harper's, Playboy and The New Yorker. Works such as Kiss Kiss subsequently collected Dahl's stories into anthologies, and gained significant popularity. Dahl wrote more than 60 short stories; they have appeared in numerous collections, some only being published in book form after his death. His three Edgar Awards were given for: in 1954, the collection Someone Like You; in 1959, the story "The Landlady"; and in 1980, the episode of Tales of the Unexpected based on "Skin".
His short story collection Tales of the Unexpected was adapted to a successful TV series of the same name, beginning with "Man from the South". When the stock of Dahl's own original stories was exhausted, the series continued by adapting stories written in Dahl's style by other authors, including John Collier and Stanley Ellin. Another collection of short stories, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, was published in 1977, and the eponymous short story was adapted into a short film in 2023 by director Wes Anderson with Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular character Henry Sugar and Ralph Fiennes as Dahl.
The last book published in his lifetime, Esio Trot, released in January 1990, marked a change in style for the author. Unlike other Dahl works (which often feature tyrannical adults and heroic/magical children), it is the story of an old, lonely man trying to make a connection with a woman he has loved from afar. In 1994, the English language audiobook recording of the book was provided by Monty Python member Michael Palin. Screenwriter Richard Curtis adapted it into a 2015 BBC television comedy film, Roald Dahl's Esio Trot, featuring Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench as the couple.
In 1972, Eleanor Cameron, also a children's book author, published an article in The Horn Book criticising Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its depiction of the African-derived Oompa-Loompas, who "have never been given the opportunity of any life outside of the chocolate factory". In 1973, Dahl posted a reply, calling Cameron's accusations "insensitive" and "monstrous". The debate between the two authors sparked much discussion and a number of letters to the editor. In 1991, Michael Dirda also discussed other criticisms of Dahl's writing, including his alleged sexism, of which Dirda wrote, "The Witches verges on a general misogyny." In 1998, Michele Landsberg analysed the alleged issues in Dahl's work and concluded that, "Throughout his work, evil, domineering, smelly, fat, ugly women are his favourite villains." In 2008, Una Mullally argued that there are feminist messages in Dahl's work, even if they may be obscured, "The Witches offers up plenty of feminist complexities. The witches themselves are terrifying and vile things, and always women... The book is often viewed as sexist, but that assessment ignores one of the heroines of the story, the child narrator's grandmother."
"He didn't always explain what his words meant, but children can work them out because they often sound like a word they know, and he loved using onomatopoeia. For example, you know that something lickswishy and delumptious is good to eat, whereas something uckyslush or rotsome is definitely not! He also used sounds that children love to say, like squishous and squizzle, or fizzlecrump and fizzwiggler."
The British television series, Tales of the Unexpected, originally aired on ITV between 1979 and 1988. The series was released to tie in with Dahl's short story anthology of the same name, which had introduced readers to many motifs that were common in his writing. The series was an anthology of different tales, initially based on Dahl's short stories. The stories were sometimes sinister, sometimes wryly comedic and usually had a twist ending. Dahl introduced on camera all the episodes of the first two series, which bore the full title Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected.
In honour of Dahl, the Royal Gibraltar Post Office issued a set of four stamps in 2010 featuring Quentin Blake's original illustrations for four of the children's books written by Dahl during his long career; The BFG, The Twits, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Matilda. A set of six commemorative Royal Mail stamps was issued in 2012, featuring Blake's illustrations for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, The Twits, Matilda, Fantastic Mr Fox, and James and the Giant Peach. Dahl's influence has extended beyond literary figures. For instance, the film director Tim Burton recalled from childhood "the second layer [after Dr. Seuss] of connecting to a writer who gets the idea of the modern fable—and the mixture of light and darkness, and not speaking down to kids, and the kind of politically incorrect humour that kids get. I've always like that, and it's shaped everything I've felt that I've done." Steven Spielberg read The BFG to his children when they were young, stating the book celebrates the fact that it's OK to be different as well as to have an active imagination: "It's very important that we preserve the tradition of allowing young children to run free with their imaginations and magic and imagination are the same thing." Actress Scarlett Johansson named Fantastic Mr Fox one of the five books that made a difference to her.
"Dahl has an incredibly distinctive style: his subversive, unpredictable plots, musical prose and caustic wit are impossible to imitate. And yet his stories have proved astonishingly malleable. Often adapted by equally idiosyncratic writers and directors, when translated onto stage and screen, his works seamlessly take on the impression of their new maker. Like in many of his stories, Dahl offers a narrative where troublemaking is rewarded, and games and tricks are more successful than following rules. Perhaps this, more than anything, is the reason why Dahl's stories excite the imagination of so many adults and children, and why so many storytellers across stage and screen can't resist remaking his tales in their own individual style. Right across his body of work, playfulness and inventiveness are always prized over boring qualities like obedience and deference. In Dahl's world, creative disruption is presented in such an appealing, delicious light, that you can't help but join in the fun."
In September 2021, Netflix acquired the Roald Dahl Story Company in a deal worth more than £500 million ($686 million). A film adaptation of Matilda the Musical was released by Netflix and Sony Pictures Releasing in December 2022, and the cast includes Emma Thompson as Miss Trunchbull. The next Dahl adaptation for Netflix, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, was released in September 2023, with its director Wes Anderson also adapting three additional Dahl short stories for Netflix in 2024.
Education
Roald Dahl attended several schools in England, including St. Peter’s Preparatory School and Repton School. He did not pursue higher education at a university, instead joining the Shell Petroleum Company after finishing school. His diverse experiences—from working for Shell to serving as a fighter pilot—greatly influenced his writing style and subject matter.
Dahl first attended The Cathedral School, Llandaff. At age eight, he and four of his friends were caned by the headmaster after putting a dead mouse in a jar of gobstoppers at the local sweet shop, which was owned by a "mean and loathsome" old woman named Mrs Pratchett. The five boys named their prank the "Great Mouse Plot of 1924". Mrs Pratchett inspired Dahl's creation of the cruel headmistress Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, and a prank, this time in a water jug belonging to Trunchbull, would also appear in the book. Gobstoppers were a favourite sweet among British schoolboys between the two World Wars, and Dahl referred to them in his fictional Everlasting Gobstopper which was featured in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
From 1929, when he was 13, Dahl attended Repton School in Derbyshire. Dahl disliked the hazing and described an environment of ritual cruelty and status domination, with younger boys having to act as personal servants for older boys, frequently subject to terrible beatings. His biographer Donald Sturrock described these violent experiences in Dahl's early life. Dahl expresses some of these darker experiences in his writings, which is also marked by his hatred of cruelty and corporal punishment.
According to Dahl's autobiography, Boy: Tales of Childhood, a friend named Michael was viciously caned by headmaster Geoffrey Fisher. Writing in that same book, Dahl reflected: "All through my school life 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 have got over it." Fisher was later appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, and he crowned Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. However, according to Dahl's biographer Jeremy Treglown, the caning took place in May 1933, a year after Fisher had left Repton; the headmaster was in fact J. T. Christie, Fisher's successor as headmaster. Dahl said the incident caused him to "have doubts about religion and even about God". He viewed the brutality of the caning as being the result of the headmaster's enmity towards children, an attitude Dahl would later attribute to the Grand High Witch in his dark fantasy The Witches, with the novel's main antagonist exclaiming that "children are rrreee-volting!".
Dahl was never seen as a particularly talented writer in his school years, with one of his English teachers writing in his school report, "I have never met anybody who so persistently writes words meaning the exact opposite of what is intended." He was exceptionally tall, reaching 6 ft in adult life. Dahl played sports including cricket, football and golf, and was made captain of the squash team. As well as having a passion for literature, he developed an interest in photography and often carried a camera with him.
Written in 1990 and published posthumously in 1991, Roald Dahl's Guide to Railway Safety was one of the last things he ever wrote. In a response to rising levels of train-related fatalities involving children, the British Railways Board had asked Dahl to write the text of the booklet, and Quentin Blake to illustrate it, to help young people enjoy using the railways safely. The booklet is structured as a conversation with children, and it was distributed to primary school pupils in Britain. According to children's literature critic Deborah Cogan Thacker, Dahl's tendency in his children's books is to "put child characters in powerful positions" and so, the idea of "talking down" to children was always an anathema to him, therefore Dahl, in the introduction of the booklet, states; "I must now regretfully become one of those unpopular giants who tells you WHAT TO DO and WHAT NOT TO DO. This is something I have never done in any of my books."
While his whimsical fantasy stories feature an underlying warm sentiment, they are often juxtaposed with grotesque, darkly comic and sometimes harshly violent scenarios. The Witches, George's Marvellous Medicine and Matilda are examples of this formula. The BFG follows, with the good giant (the BFG or "Big Friendly Giant") representing the "good adult" archetype and the other giants being the "bad adults". This formula is also somewhat evident in Dahl's film script for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Class-conscious themes also surface in works such as Fantastic Mr Fox and Danny, the Champion of the World where the unpleasant wealthy neighbours are outwitted.
In 2008, the UK charity Booktrust and Children's Laureate Michael Rosen inaugurated The Roald Dahl Funny Prize, an annual award to authors of humorous children's fiction. On 14 September 2009 (the day after what would have been Dahl's 93rd birthday) the first blue plaque in his honour was unveiled in Llandaff. Rather than commemorating his place of birth, however, the plaque was erected on the wall of the former sweet shop (and site of "The Great Mouse Plot of 1924") that features in the first part of his autobiography Boy. It was unveiled by his widow Felicity and son Theo. In 2018, Weston-super-Mare, the town described by Dahl as a "seedy seaside resort", unveiled a blue plaque dedicated to him, on the site of the since-demolished boarding school Dahl attended, St Peter's. The anniversary of Dahl's birthday on 13 September is celebrated as "Roald Dahl Day" in Africa, the United Kingdom and Latin America.
* "The Devious Bachelor", Sunday Book Review of The Irregulars, Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington by Jennet Conant, The New York Times, 17 October 2008
* "The Devious Bachelor", Sunday Book Review of The Irregulars, Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington by Jennet Conant, The New York Times, 17 October 2008
Summary Table
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Born | September 13, 1916 |
| Died | November 23, 1990 |
| Age at Death | 74 |
| Marital Status | Married Patricia Neal (divorced), then Felicity d'Abreu Crosland |
| Net Worth (1990) | $3.75 million – $20 million (most cited: $10 million) |
| Net Worth (2025, estate) | Billions (from estate deals, e.g., Netflix acquisition for up to $1.6+ billion combined) |
| Notable Works | Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach |
| Annual Estate Profits | ~$17 million (2018) |
| Education | St. Peter’s School, Repton School |
