Roald Dahl Said A 'Monumental Bash On The Head' Led Him To Write: 8 Intimate Details Of The Writer's Life From 'Storyteller' (PHOTOS)

Roald Dahl died 20 years ago. His life was filled with adventure, tragedy and incident. He was born in Wales in 1916, the only son of two Norwegian emigrés. After a conventional private education, he went to East Africa to work for Shell Oil and joined the Royal Air Force to train as a pilot when war broke out in 1939. He saw action in Greece and Palestine, before injuries sustained in a plane crash, caused him to be invalided out of active service.

Dahl often maintained that it was this "monumental bash on the head" that led to his becoming a writer. Initially he wrote stories about his experiences as a wartime flyer, then he became famous for tightly-wrought short stories with a dramatic twist at the end. His publishers dubbed him the Master of the Macabre. In his late 40s, he started writing for children. Many of his books, most notably "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "James and the Giant Peach" and "Fantastic Mr. Fox" are now acknowledged as timeless classics of the genre. He was married for more than 25 years to the actress Patricia Neal who died earlier this year.

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Pat, Olivia, Roald and Tessa on Holiday in Norway, 1958

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Dahl was very proud of his Norwegian ancestry and took his young family to the land of his ancestors every summer, where he recreated the holidays he had himself experienced there as a child. He later described these vacations as "totally idyllic ... The mere mention of them used to send shivers of joy rippling all over my skin."

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Dahl was very proud of his Norwegian ancestry and took his young family to the land of his ancestors every summer, where he recreated the holidays he had himself experienced there as a child. He later described these vacations as "totally idyllic ... The mere mention of them used to send shivers of joy rippling all over my skin."

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Comments

[intalaume]

12:41 AM on 10/05/2010

fantastic photographs great article!

[fishnetdiver]

04:13 AM on 10/04/2010

as a child I thourghouly enjoyed Gene Wilder's 'Willy Wonka'...
as an adult I would have loved to seen Peter Sellers play the part as I didn't appreciate him until I was in my late teens and saw 'Being There' and then 'Dr Strangelove'...

[olddognewtrick]

09:47 PM on 10/03/2010

For being 6'5" he certainly blends in well...

[verticallychallenged]

09:37 PM on 10/03/2010

I'm reading Matilda to my 5th grade class. They are engrossed in the story.

[Cynth Bage]

12:52 AM on 10/08/2010

I read Matilda to my daughter when she was in 5th grade, and she loved it! Wonderful story, and they really do get the humor in it.

[Zee Bear]

12:00 PM on 10/03/2010

His books took me to a wonderful place where reality and fantasy intertwined to form one of the greatest worlds a child could ever experience. I attained my love for reading through Dahl's books and sometimes peruse them to reminisce about the good ol' days.
It's sad that kids these days will probably never respect his work in the same way many others preceding them. Still, huge tribute to Dahl for writing his amazing books.

[Gronkie]

10:02 AM on 10/03/2010

Every voracious reader has that one book that grabbed them when they were young and set them on the path of a life-long love of reading. Charlie & The Chocolate Factory was that book for me.

[Sabrina DAmico]

11:03 PM on 10/02/2010

I would have had a very different childhood if not for my discovery of Dahl. I put all my fear and anxiety aside and lived through his stories. I loved how his protagonists were eccentric, sensitive beings in seemingly uncompromising situations. I would try to fake that strength that they had.

[blogisti]

07:57 PM on 10/02/2010

I love to read all of his stories to children. Children from 6-7 on up love them because the children are the heroes and the adults the villains. They know quite early that adults are naughty, or bad, or just plain evil. Dahl knew children.

[Voltairine]

06:54 PM on 10/02/2010

20 years ago, when I first heard that Roald Dahl had died, I felt like I lost a friend. I still miss him - and boy, I would LOVE to see some of his Uncle Oswald stories made into movies!

[calicanuck]

11:20 AM on 10/02/2010

When I was a kid I wanted to write stories just like Dahl. I grew up and cast my reading net out further and didn't turn out to be very similar so my writing is entirely different, but I think Dahl's ability to tell a good story has in some ways resonated and stuck with me. I would count him as an influence. I'm actually reading his short story collection right now. He comes across as an old fashioned type and a man who has issues with the growing power of women in some, but that doesn't detract at all from the sheer skill and craft with which he tells his tales. Worth a read for sure.

[oxygen]

09:45 AM on 10/02/2010

they had nice kids who grew up to be nice people

[Pennsanic]

09:22 AM on 10/02/2010

Just finished "Danny The Champion of the World" to my son. It's an excellent story. He loves all of Dahl's work that I've read to him, but James and the Giant Peach best. You can also buy a cd of Dahl reading some of his own stories--it's pretty great.