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ROALD DAHL: THE MAN BEHIND THE MAGIC

Monday 22 November 2010, 14:20

Laura Chamberlain

Tagged with:

 * books
 * People

Comments

Tuesday 23 November 2010 marks the 20th anniversary of the death of one of the
greatest children's writers to have heralded from Wales - Roald Dahl.

Dahl was born on 13 September 1916 in Llandaff, Cardiff to Norwegian parents
Harald and Sofie Magdalene. His acquaintance with Wales may have been brief, but
his time spent at the family's sprawling Victorian farmhouse, Ty Mynydd in
Radyr, sparked Dahl's love of the natural world and countryside, and was
regarded by the Dahl children as a kind of rural paradise. The family also spent
holidays at the seaside resort of Tenby on the Pembrokeshire coast.

Dahl briefly attended Llandaff Cathedral School in Cardiff before his mother
sent him to St Peter's boarding school in Weston-super-Mare, and then to Repton
School in Derbyshire when he was 13. Sofie Magadalene eventually moved the
family from Wales to Bexley, Kent in 1927.





Roald Dahl, with his pet goat Alma, outside his home Gipsy House © RDNL,
courtesy of The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre

While I could bombard you with a list of mundane facts about how his bestselling
books continue to delight both children and adult bookworms to this day, I'm not
going to.

Having recently read the latest biography published about the author,
Storyteller: The Life Of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock, I'm going to share a
couple of the lesser known stories from the life of this intriguing man.
Sturrock was asked to pen the book by Dahl's daughter Ophelia, and was given
access to private papers and letters.





Image © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Life in the RAF, and as a secret agent

At six foot five, Dahl wasn't a conventional height to fit into the cramped
cockpit of a Hawker Hurricane, or any other aeroplane used by the RAF. But his
love of flying, and his exceptional ability, promised a great career in the
service.

After completing his training, Dahl faced his first action serving in World War
Two. In September 1940 he had to journey from Fouka in Algeria to meet his
squadron, at a secret location in the North African desert.

Perhaps due to his relative inexperience, Pilot Officer Dahl failed to navigate
his way to the base and airstrip, and as the darkness approached he had no
option but to attempt a forced landing. The attempt was unsuccessful. His
Gloster Gladiator had hit a boulder on descent at 80 miles per hour, and Dahl
hit the front canopy of his cockpit and was seriously injured.

He was discovered two miles away from 80 Squadron's base. His overalls were so
badly burned and his face so disfigured that he was almost unrecognisable as an
RAF officer, and was initially mistaken by the doctor at the base for an enemy
Italian.

This plane crash was to plague Dahl's health for years to come. He suffered
frequent headaches and even blackouts after the accident, and suffered with
chronic back problems - and resultant spinal operations - for the majority of
his adult life.

Yet his exuberance towards flying, and the notion of it being a source of
freedom and liberation, is present in many of his works - for example in Charlie
And The Great Glass Elevator, or James' flight in the peach. It also spurred him
onto recovery after his accident, retaining the hope that he would fly again
despite his horrific injuries.

Dahl, eventually invalided from his flying duties in the RAF, also fell into the
world of espionage while working as an assistant air attaché in Washington. In a
role used to promote the British war effort in America (and counter to Nazi
propaganda), Dahl found himself ensconced in the world of the British Security
Coordination (BSC) - which represented both branches of the British secret
services in the USA: MI6 and the Special Operations Executive.

During this period of his life he spent time socialising with, and gleaning
information from, the president, Franklin D. Roosevelt - whose wife Eleanor was
a fan of his literary work. He also found himself in circles that included
Hollywood actors, authors and influential American celebrities, and would have
known of another BSC member, and later writer, Ian Fleming. (Dahl would later
write the screenplays for two films loosely based on Fleming's work: the James
Bond film You Only Live Twice and children's favourite Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.)

Family tragedies

The Dahl family - Roald, his wife - the actor Patricia Neal, and their young
children Olivia, Tessa and baby Theo - divided their time between Great
Missenden in Buckinghamshire and New York in the late 1950s and early 1960s, due
primarily to Neal's acting commitments.

Dahl, though, was tiring of this division. He began to loathe and also fear New
York, thinking it a dangerous place, and wished to spend his time solely in
England. His attitudes towards the city seemed almost prophetic, as his only son
was to be involved in an horrific road accident in December 1960. 

 

The baby's skull shattered. It was a miracle that he survived, but months of
hospital visits and ill health for were to follow, as cerebrospinal fluid had
built up in Theo's head, pressing on his brain and causing him to go blind.

The internal drainage tube set up to drain the fluid blocked, and continued to
do so repeatedly in the following months. Dahl identified that a defective valve
was causing the problem, and set about creating a better alternative with
paediatric neurosurgeon Kenneth Till and Stanley Wade, an expert
craftsman/engineer. Together they created the Dahl-Wade-Till valve, which was
first fitted successfully on a child in 1962. Before it was superceded it was
used on almost 3,000 children.

Just two years later the Dahls were rocked by another tragedy. In November 1962,
Dahl's eldest daughter Olivia contracted measles. It escalated to measles
encephalitis, a rare inflammation of the brain, and she died at the age of just
seven. In a chilling parallel, Roald's eldest sister Astri had also died at
seven, having never recovered from a burst appendix and the resultant
peritonitis. Both Roald and his father Harald had each lost their dearest child.

More heartache was to follow. In February 1975, while three months pregnant and
filming John Ford's Seven Women, Dahl's wife Pat suffered a stroke and three
masssive haemorrhages. She was in a coma for three weeks and the situation
looked bleak. But Pat regained consciousness, and from then on the author was
relentless in his actions to help his wife's recovery, determined to get her
back to fitness and back into acting.





Roald Dahl in his writing hut, circa 1990 © Jan Baldwin, courtesy of The Roald
Dahl Museum and Story Centre

From reading Sturrock's biography, I've learnt that Dahl was a complicated man.
Argumentative and volatile, he was an incredible storyteller, was extremely
generous (he loved giving gifts) and often loved the company of children more
than adults. As Donald Sturrock himself puts it:

> "He was like a firework: unpredictable, volatile and exciting. He could
> delight you, but he was dangerous, too. Get too close and you would likely be
> burned. However indignant and hotheaded he might appear, his intemperateness
> could rapidly be defused by humour or kindness. You never quite knew what he
> would do next."

Let us know your thoughts on Roald Dahl - and what your personal favourite book
by the author is. For me, it has to be the wickedly funny, and perhaps
grotesque, The Twits.

Additional links


 * The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre: www.roalddahlmuseum.org
 * The official Roald Dahl website: www.roalddahl.com
 * Roald Dahl on the BBC Wales Arts website

Tagged with:

 * books
 * People

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