The famous British author, who created the world of Willy Wonka, Matilda, the Big Friendly Giant or The Twits, as well as his influential and admired Tales of the Unexpected, was actual of Norwegian descent. He was born in Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales, on September 13th 1916. His parents were Harald Dahl and Sofie Magdalene Dahl (Hesselberg by her maiden name), so the first language of the writer would actually be Norwegian. Maybe this was the reason behing the somewhat terrible spelling mistakes that Dahl would often make in his letters and first hand manuscripts. He was named Roald after Roald Amundsen, the famous explorer who had become a Norwegian national hero in the first years of the 20th century.
Although his school years were rather difficult for him, and his results weren't always the best they could have been, he was well liked by his peers for his sarcastic humour, pleasant and often jokefull presence, talent for sports and especially his passion for photography.
Roald Dahl really liked chocolate, especially Cadbury, although he almost never ate chocolate cake or chocolate ice-cream.
Often he named as his favourite authors Rudyad Kipling, Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, and he liked to say that they influenced and taught him more about books and literary craft that any number of school years or teachers could ever had.
He was fond of life's small pleasures. Roald Dahl loved gourmet meals, was very passionate about Norwegian and British traditional cooking, smoked cigarettes, loved his garden (especially his orchids), drank red wine, knew a lot about art and collected paintings and drawings, had an impressive knowledge of classical music.
Known all over the world as one of the most influential and succesfull children books author ever, Roald Dahl made his debut for his genre in 1943, with the little-known Gremlins. Rather popular at it's time - it would much later inspire the two movies sharing the same name - it was, strangely or not, almost forgotten and it seldom makes an appearance on his best stories lists.
The Willy Wonka books were first meant as a trilogy, after the first part, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, was a success. Continuing the adventure of Wonka's merry bunch, Roald Dahl meant for the third part to take part in America and even at the White House. Unfortunatelly he never got around to writing the final book, the main reason for which the end to Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator seems a little forced.
The author was a friend and an admired of Ernest Hemingway. Just try to imagine how a collaboration between the two would have been.
Roald Dahl was also a close friend of English illustrator and cartoonist Quentin Blake, who would create some iconic drawings for many of Dahl's books. Often, as Dahl often mentioned, with his usual humour, Blake would picture the characters even better that Dahl himself.
Photo: charlieandthechocolatefactoryfilm.wikia.com
May 2016
