Let's read something about Roald Dahl...

Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl was born in Cardiff in 1916.

His parents were Norwegian but were living

in Britain because his father was a

shipbroker. He had one brother and four sisters

and when he was seven years old, he went to

Llandaff Cathedral School. Two years later he

became a boarder at St Peter’s School in

Weston-super-Mare - and then at 13 he moved to

Repton School, in Derbyshire.

Roald Dahl was not interested in going to university. He wanted to travel and so joined the Shell Oil Company with the ambition of becoming part of their foreign staff. In 1938 he got his wish to go abroad - the company sent him to Mombasa, in Kenya, where he sold oil to the owners of diamond mines and sisal plantations.

In 1939, when World War II broke out, he joined the RAF in Nairobi and learned to fly aircraft. He was sent to Cairo, then ordered to go into the Libyan desert, ready for action.

It was here that his plane crashed, leaving him with spinal injuries from which he was to suffer all his life.
In 1952, Dahl met actress Patricia Neal. They were married in the following year and returned to England to live at Gipsy House in the village of Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire. He lived there for the rest of his life.
Dahl and his wife had five children – Olivia, Tessa, Theo, Ophelia and Lucy.

In the late 1970s Dahl met Quentin Blake, who was to illustrate his latest story, The Enormous Crocodile. This collaboration marked the beginning of a flourishing partnership.

In 1983 he won the Children’s Book Award for The BFG and the Whitbread Award for The Witches. He won the Children’s Book Award again in 1989 with Matilda. In 1983 Patricia Neal and Dahl divorced. Later that year, Dahl married Felicity D’Abreu, with whom he was to remain for the rest of his life.

Roald Dahl died in 1990 at the age of 74.