ĭahl transferred to St Peter's boarding school in Weston-super-Mare. 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. The five boys named their prank the " Great Mouse Plot of 1924". 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.
ĭahl first attended The Cathedral School, Llandaff. 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. Upon his death, Harald Dahl left a fortune assessed for probate of £158,917 10s. Later that year, his youngest sister, Asta, was born. ĭahl's sister Astri died from appendicitis at age 7 in 1920 when Dahl was 3 years old, and his father died of pneumonia at age 57 several weeks later. Mrs Pratchett's former sweet shop in Llandaff, Cardiff, has a blue plaque commemorating the mischief played by young Roald Dahl and his friends, who were regular customers. His grandmother Ellen Wallace was a descendant of an early 18th-century Scottish immigrant to Norway.
The children were raised in Norway's Lutheran state church, the Church of Norway, and were baptised at the Norwegian Church, Cardiff. His first language was Norwegian, which he spoke at home with his parents and his sisters Astri, Alfhild, and Else. Dahl was named after Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen. His mother immigrated to the UK and married his father in 1911. They had two children together (Ellen Marguerite and Louis) before her death in 1907. Dahl's father, a wealthy shipbroker, had immigrated to the UK from Sarpsborg in Norway and settled in Cardiff in the 1880s with his first wife, a Frenchwoman named Marie Beaurin-Gresser. Roald Dahl was born in 1916 at Villa Marie, Fairwater Road, in Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales, to Norwegians Harald Dahl (1863–1920) and Sofie Magdalene Dahl ( née Hesselberg) (1885–1967).
His adult works include Tales of the Unexpected.ĭahl at age 10 with his sisters Alfhild, Else and Asta. 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, The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me and George's Marvellous Medicine. His children's books champion the kindhearted and feature an underlying warm sentiment. ĭahl'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. Though he and his work have been criticised for antisemitism, racism and misogyny, in 2008, The Times placed Dahl 16th on its list of "The 50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945". His awards for contribution to literature include the 1983 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the British Book Awards' Children's Author of the Year in 1990. He has been referred to as "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century". He rose to prominence as a writer in the 1940s with works for children and for adults, and he became one of the world's best-selling authors. He became a fighter pilot and, subsequently, an intelligence officer, rising to the rank of acting wing commander. He served in the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the Second World War. ĭahl was born in Wales to affluent Norwegian immigrant parents, and spent most of his life in England. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide. Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter pilot.
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