Roald Dahl

Overview

Born
September 13, 1916 · Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales, UK
Died
November 23, 1990 · Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, UK (leukemia)
Height
6′ 6″ (1.98 m)

Biography

Family

Spouses
Children
Relatives

Trademarks

Gluttonous characters: Augustus Gloop from Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Bruno Jenkins from The Witches, Boggis from Fantastic Mr Fox and Bruce Bogtrotter from Matilda.
Main characters are often children.
Villains are often adults who hate children
Orphans; James from James and the Giant Peach, the main character from The Witches and Sophie from The BFG.
His villains are often extremely ugly

Trivia

His only son, Theo Dahl, suffered a brain injury when his baby carriage was struck by a taxi when the boy was just four months old. The most serious of his injuries was hydrocephalus (commonly known as water on the brain). Dahl got together with a pair of friends--a neurosurgeon and an engineer--and created a device called the Wade-Dahl-Till valve to alleviate cranial pressure. Theo recovered before the device was perfected, but it allowed thousands of others suffering from hydrocephalus to recover from their injuries. His book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" is dedicated to Theo, who almost died.
After his first wife, Patricia Neal, suffered a series of devastating strokes in 1965, he was appalled at the lack of effective rehabilitation. He subsequently designed techniques that restored her to full functionality after doctors had told him she would never recover. His techniques are now standard procedure throughout the world in the treatment of stroke victims.
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".
Wrote his novels in his garden shed.
Wrote two screenplays based on books by Ian Fleming: You Only Live Twice (1967) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968). Coincidentally, Fleming's cousin, Christopher Lee, appears in the film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), based on Dahl's book. He also appears in Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), which is named after a word Dahl coined.

Quotes

[when asked what the his formula for success was as an author of children's books] Conspiring with children against adults.
[1988 interview with Todd McCormack] When you're writing a book, with people in it as opposed to animals, it is no good having people who are ordinary, because they are not going to interest your readers at all. Every writer in the world has to use the characters that have something interesting about them and this is even more true in children's books. I find that the only way to make my characters really interesting to children is to exaggerate all their good or bad qualities, and so if a person is nasty or bad or cruel, you make them very nasty, very bad, very cruel. If they are ugly, you make them extremely ugly. That, I think, is fun and makes an impact.
A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.
A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom.
A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.