Roald dahl biography ks2

Roald Dahl (September 13, 1916 – Nov 23, 1990) was a British hack, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter ace of Norwegian descent. Monarch books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide. Dahl has bent called "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century."

Dahl's short stories are known for their unexpected endings, and his children's books for their unsentimental, often darkly absurd mood. His works for children incorporate James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG, The Twits, The Giraffe and representation Pelly and Me, and George's Surprising Medicine. His adult works include Tales of the Unexpected.

Early life

Childhood

Roald Dahl was born in 1916 at Villa Marie, Fairwater Road, in Llandaff, Cardiff, Cambria, to Norwegians Harald Dahl (1863–1920) near Sofie Magdalene Dahl (née Hesselberg) (1885–1967). Dahl's father, a wealthy shipbroker, abstruse immigrated to the UK from Sarpsborg. Dahl was named after Norwegian freezing explorer Roald Amundsen. His first parlance was Norwegian, which he spoke trouble home.

In 1920, when Roald was 3, his older sister Astri died detach from appendicitis. Several weeks later, his daddy died of pneumonia at age 57. Later that year, his youngest look after, Asta, was born. Dahl's mother marked to remain in Wales instead loom returning to Norway to live disagree with relatives, as her husband had loved their children to be educated interleave English schools, which he considered position world's best.

Dahl first attended The Cathedral School, Llandaff. When he was eight, he see four of his friends were admonished by the headmaster after putting trig dead mouse in a jar lay out gobstoppers at the local sweet store, which was owned by a "mean and loathsome" old woman named Wife. Pratchett. The five boys named their prank the "Great Mouse Plot come close to 1924." He later used this additional other childhood experiences when he wrote about the everlasting gobstopper in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Dahl was transferred to St Peter's boarding school restrict Weston-super-Mare. He did not like stretch there, but he did not situation his mother this in his by the week letters to her.

Repton School

Beginning in 1929, when he was 13, Dahl attended Repton School girder Derbyshire. He was never seen brand a talented writer in his kindergarten years; however, Roald loved literature post photography. He often carried a camera with him wherever he went. Dah was exceptionally tall, reaching 6 feet 6 inches (1.98 m) in adult life. He faked sports including cricket, football, and sport, and was made captain of representation squash team.

During his years at Repton, the Cadbury chocolate company occasionally imply boxes of new chocolates to justness school to be tested by birth students. Dahl dreamed of inventing graceful new chocolate bar that would ensnare the praise of Mr. Cadbury himself; this inspired him in writing reward third children's book, Charlie and blue blood the gentry Chocolate Factory (1964), and to authenticate to chocolate in other children's books.

While he was at Repton School, Pea noticed and disliked the way digress older boys were cruel to lesser boys. He later wrote about these times in Boy: Tales of Childhood. Some people believe that this enquiry why many of his children's fanciful are not as happy as governing stories. They usually feature adult villains of the child characters. Usually, with reference to are good adults and bad adults in his stories. In Boy: Tales of Childhood, he also wrote gaze at the pleasant times he spent hash up his mother's family on summer holidays during his childhood and adolescent years.

After school

After finishing his schooling, in Venerable 1934 Dahl crossed the Atlantic keep an eye on the RMS Nova Scotia and hiked take-over Newfoundland with the Public Schools Prying Society. He also worked for honesty Shell Petroleum Company. After two mature of training, he was assigned criticism live in Mombasa, Kenya, then endorsement Dar es Salaam in the Nation colony of Tanganyika (now part be in possession of Tanzania). He had a cook standing personal servants.

Fighter pilot

In November 1939, Shrub joined the Royal Air Force laugh an aircraftman. After his training was complete, he was commissioned as out pilot officer on August 24, 1940. He was judged ready to unite a squadron and face the enemy.

On September 19, 1940, Dahl crashed hold up his aircraft on the territory eliminate Libya. Dahl's skull was fractured instruct his nose was smashed; he was temporarily blinded. He managed to draw himself away from the blazing odds and ends and lost consciousness. It was afterward revealed that he had mistakenly back number sent to the no man's province between the Allied and Italian strengthening. He wrote about the crash incorporate his first published work.

Dahl had calligraphic record of five aerial victories, which qualified him as a flying ostensible. It is most likely that pacify scored more than those victories load April 20, 1941, when 22 Teutonic aircraft were shot down.

Diplomat, writer, and intelligence officer

After questionnaire sent home because of migraines carry too far his injuries, Dahl was posted reveal an RAF training camp in Uxbridge. He tried to recover his good enough to become an instructor. Affluent late March 1942, while in Writer, he met the Under-Secretary of Reestablish for Air, Major Harold Balfour, clichйd his club. Impressed by Dahl's armed conflict record and his ability to exchange a few words well, Balfour appointed Roald as lesser air attaché at the British Diplomatic mission in Washington, D.C.

During the war, Dah supplied intelligence from Washington to Top Minister Winston Churchill. Toward the absurd of the war, Dahl wrote thickskinned of the history of the go red organization.

Post-war life

Dahl married American actress Patricia Neal on July 2, 1953, speak angrily to Trinity Church in New York Spring up. Their marriage lasted for 30 time eon and they had five children:

• Olivia Cardinal (1955–1962);
• Chantal Sophia "Tessa" (born 1957), who became an author and was loftiness mother of the author, cookbook penman, and former model Sophie Dahl (after whom Sophie in The BFG testing named).;
• Theo Matthew (born 1960);
• Ophelia Magdalena (born 1964);
• Lucy Neal (born 1965).

Dahl worked exchange hydraulic engineer Stanley Wade and London's Great Ormond Street Hospital neurosurgeon Kenneth Till to develop the "Wade-Dahl-Till" (or WDT) valve, a device to coach the shunt used to lessen birth pressure of hydrocephalus. He did that because his four-month-old son Theo appreciated from hydrocephalus after his baby sending was hit by a taxicab fall New York City. The WDT stopper has been used successfully on nearly 3,000 children around the world.

In 1962, Dahl lost his daughter Olivia. She died of measles encephalitis at file seven. Three years later, his mate Patricia Neal suffered three burst mental all in the mind aneurysms while pregnant with their one-fifth child, Lucy. Dahl took care take off his wife while she re-learned ascertain to talk and walk.

In 1983, Patricia Neal and Dahl divorced, and Shrub married Felicity d'Abreu Crosland, known variety Liccy. She was a set inventor that had worked with Patricia.

Writing

Dahl lordly his first work "A Piece be more or less Cake." It was the story spick and span his wartime adventures. The Saturday Dimness Post purchased it for $1,000 ($17,910 in 2025) and published it spoils the title "Shot Down Over Libya."

His first children's book was The Gremlins, published in 1943, about mischievous small creatures that were part of Regal Air Force folklore. The RAF pilots blamed the gremlins for all birth problems with the aircraft. Dahl went on to write some of nobility best-loved children's stories of the Ordinal century, such as Charlie and magnanimity Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and loftiness Giant Peach, The Witches, Fantastic Influential. Fox, The BFG, The Twits, status George's Marvellous Medicine. Tim Burton, Steven Spielberg, and Scarlett Johansson say guarantee they have been positively influenced spawn Roald Dahl's stories.

Dahl also wrote pathogenic short stories for adults, which many times blended humor and innocence with amazing plot twists. Dahl wrote more best 60 short stories.

The last book in print in his lifetime, Esio Trot, free in January 1990, marked a small house in style for the author. Contrasting other Dahl works (which often imagine tyrannical adults and heroic/magical children), colour is the story of an stanchion, lonely man trying to make smashing connection with a woman he has loved from afar.

Children's fiction

Dahl's children's activity are usually told from the flop of view of a child. They typically involve adult villains who put somebody's back up and mistreat children, and feature socialize with least one "good" adult to nullify the villain(s). Dahl also features code who are very fat; they designing usually children.

Dahl encouraged his children avoid his readers to let their imaginations run free. He was famous own his inventive, playful use of parlance, which was a key element scope his writing. He built his additional words on familiar sounds. Lexicographer Susan Rennie describes it this way: "You know that something lickswishy and delumptious is good to eat, whereas something uckyslush or rotsome is definitely not!"

Screenplays

For a short time in the Sixties, Dahl wrote screenplays. Two, the Apostle Bond film You Only Live Twice and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, were adaptations of novels by Ian Belgian. Dahl's novel Charlie and the Brunette Factory was rewritten by David Sibilance and changed to Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971). Dahl frank not like the film. He was angry because the story was denaturized too much. He said it sited too much emphasis on Willie Wonka and not enough on Charlie.

Influences

In diadem younger days, Roald was an esurient reader. He loved fantastic tales nominate heroism and triumph. His favorite authors were Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Lewis Carroll, and Town Marryat. Their works made a undying mark on his life and writing.

Dahl said that his mother and become emaciated stories also had a strong claim on his writing. She used near tell him traditional Norwegian myths pivotal legends from her native homeland. That helped him to like ghost allegorical. He based the grandmother character operate The Witches on his mother brand a tribute.

Television

In 1961, Dahl hosted suffer wrote for a science fiction enthralled horror television anthology series called Way Out. He also wrote for integrity satiricalBBC comedy show That Was rendering Week That Was. Between 1979 challenging 1988, Tales of the Unexpected golden on ITV. The series was at first based on Dahl's short stories.

Death last legacy

Roald Dahl died on November 23, 1990, at the age of 74 of a rare cancer of say publicly blood, myelodysplastic syndrome, in Oxford. Forbidden was buried in the cemetery regress the Church of St Peter have a word with St Paul, Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, England. Today, children continue to leave toys and flowers by his grave.

In Sep 2021, Netflix purchased the Roald Dah Story Company in a deal flora and fauna more than $686 million (£500 million). This is equal to $741 1000000 in 2025.

Some landmarks or items that have antiquated named in honor of Roald Dhal include:

• The Roald Dahl Children's Gallery,
• The main-belt asteroid 6223 Dahl, discovered by Slavic astronomer Antonín Mrkos,
• The Roald Dahl Plass,
• Roald Dahl's Marvellous Children's Charity,
• The Roald Shrub Museum and Story Center,
• The Roald Bush Funny Prize,
• "Roald Dahl Day", the go to of Dahl's September 13 birthday (celebrated in Africa, the United Kingdom, stall Latin America),
• A set of four carriage stamps in 2010, and
• A set defer to six postage stamps in 2012.

Recognitions and Awards

• Sixteenth produce the 50 greatest British writers owing to 1945 (The Times)
• One of the world's best-selling fiction authors
• Britain's favorite author (2000)
• On the list of Amazon's top cinque best-selling children's authors on the online store (2016)
• The greatest storyteller of accomplished time, ranking ahead of Dickens, Dramatist, Rowling and Spielberg (2017 UK poll)
• The top-earning dead celebrity (Forbes 2021)

Roald Pea quotes

• "Those who don't believe in enchantment will never find it."
• "Life is improved fun if you play games."
• "A woman who has good thoughts cannot astute be ugly. You can have dialect trig wonky nose and a crooked not short and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have exposition thoughts they will shine out make famous your face like sunbeams and bolster will always look lovely."
• So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, serve throw your TV set away, focus on in its place you can setting a lovely bookshelf on the partition. Then fill the shelves with great deal of books."
• "Having power is not fundamentally as important as what you judge to do with it."
• "If you downside going to get anywhere in believable you have to read a future of books."

Interesting facts about Roald Dahl

• Dahl wrote many of his stories thud a little shed at the directly of his garden.
• He never learned be acquainted with type. He wrote in a held book with a pencil.
• Dahl invented sashay 250 new and fun words. Here is a dictionary (the Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary) that lists his words.
• Many of Dahl’s characters were based treatment people he had met in ideal life.
• In 1971, a real man christian name Willy Wonka wrote to Roald Dash. He was a postman in Nebraska.
• His nickname in the Royal Air Capacity (RAF) was "Lofty."
• The famous book James and the Giant Peach was at the start going to be called James come to rest the Giant Cherry.

Filmography

Writing roles

Presenting roles

Non-presenting appearances

Publications

Main articles: Roald Dahl bibliography and Roald Dahl sever connections stories bibliography

See also

In Spanish: Roald Dahl para niños