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A life of a
quiet adventure man: Roald Dahl
“I don’t like
writing for the adults.They are too serious. It is better
writing for children. It is the only way I have to enjoy myself,
too.”
The man that would become a writer for children (and adults
sometimes), that is Roald Dahl, was born in Wales in 1916. His
life was very unfortunate, in fact, in his youth there were a
lot of dead in his family. His father died when he was four and
his little sister also died when he was six. When he began to go
to school he began to hate it because the headmaster always beat
the students for absurd reasons as leaving a football sock on
the floor or forgetting to change into house-shoes at six o'clock.
After the school, he went to Africa, for working with a petrol
company. Here his life was very adventurous: great heat,
crocodiles, snakes and safaris, he lived in the jungle, learned
to speak Swahili and suffered from malaria. During the second
World War he joined the RAF and fought against Rommel’s troops.
He shot down German planes and got shot down himself. After 6
months in hospital he flew again. In 1942, he went to Washington
as Assistant Air Attaché. There, he started writing short
stories. In 1953 he married Patricia Neal, but this marriage was
unhappy. None of their kids survived, his wife suffered a stroke.
When she healed, he took the divorce in 1983 and after that he
married Felicity Crosland. This person was a very important
person in his life. In fact, when they came back in England she
encouraged Roald to write some books. In this period, in fact,
Dahl wrote some of his most important books, like:
• The GGG
• The Witch
• Matilda
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• The Great Crystal Elevator
Obviously he was also the screen-player of the movies based on
some of his books, like Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,
1971.
Roald Dahl wasn’t only a children writer, but he wrote many
tales which deal with topics like suffering, loneliness, cruelty
and embarrassment. All that because his life was too full of
contrasts, one moment he was happy, and after that he could be
unhappy.
He died in November 1990 of leukaemia.
He left us these books:
• Novels
1. The Gremlins
2. James and the Giant Peach
3. Matilda
4. The BFG
5. Esio Trot
• Collections
1. Over to You: 10 Stories of Flyers And
Flying
2. Someone Like You
3. Kiss Kiss
4. Selected Stories
5. Twenty-Nine Kisses from Roald Dahl
6. Switch Bitch
7. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and
Six More
For the complete bibliography go there
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/d/roald-dahl/
by Giulia and Renato
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