Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter ace of Norwegian descent.
Roald Dahl biography
Norwegian parents Harald Dahl (1863-1920) and Sofie Magdalene Dahl gave birth to Roald Dahl in 1916 at Villa Marie, Fairwater Road, in Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales (1885–1967).
With his first wife, Frenchwoman Marie Beaurin-Gresser, Dahl’s father, a prosperous shipbroker and self-made man had immigrated to the UK from Sarpsborg in Norway and settled in Cardiff in the 1880s. Before her passing away in 1907, they had two children together: Ellen Marguerite and Louis.
When Roald Dahl’s mother wed his father in 1911, she immigrated to the UK from Norway, where she came from a prominent family of lawyers, state church priests, wealthy merchants, and land owners. Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian polar explorer, inspired Dahl’s naming.
Due to the frequent ferry service over the Bristol Channel, the English public school his parents had requested for him to attend turned out to be the closest one.
Dahl had a bad time at St. Peter’s; he missed home a lot and wrote to his mother every week but never told her how he felt. He discovered that she had saved all of his letters after she passed away in 1967; they were read aloud as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week in 2016 to commemorate his birth’s centennial. Dahl recounted in his autobiography Boy: Stories of Childhood about his time at St Peter’s.
Roald Dahl stories
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.
Roald Dahl wife
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.