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Roald Dahl
Norwegian:
13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British novelist, short story writer,
fighter pilot
and screenwriter.
كاتب انجليزي ولد عام 1916 وكان طيارا ويكتب سيناريو للافلام
Born in
Llandaff
, Cardiff, to Norwegian parents, he served in the
Royal Air Force
during the Second World War, in which he became a
flying ace
and intelligence agent, rising to the rank of
Wing Commander
. Dahl rose to prominence in the 1940s with works for both children and adults, and became one of the world's best-selling authors. He has been referred to as "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century". In 2008
The Times
placed Dahl 16th on its list of "The 50 greatest
British writers
since 1945". His short stories are known for their unexpected endings, and his children's books for their unsentimental, often very
dark humour
.
Some of his notable works include
James and the Giant Peach
,
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
,
George's Marvellous Medicine
,
Fantastic Mr Fox
,
Matilda
,
The Witches
, and
The Big Friendly Giant
.
Early life
Roald Dahl was born at Villa Marie, Fairwater Road in
Llandaff
,
Cardiff
, Wales in 1916, to Norwegian parents, Harald Dahl and Sofie Magdalene Dahl (
née
Hesselberg). Dahl's father had moved from
Sarpsborg
in Norway and settled in Cardiff in the 1880s. His mother came over to marry his father in 1911. Dahl was named after the
polar explorer
Roald Amundsen
, a national hero in Norway at the time. He spoke Norwegian at home with his parents and sisters, Astri, Alfhild, and Else. Dahl and his sisters were christened at the
Norwegian Church, Cardiff
, where their parents worshipped.
In 1920, when Dahl was three years old, his seven-year-old sister, Astri, died from
appendicitis
.
Weeks later, his father died of
pneumonia
at the age of 57 while on a fishing trip in the Antarctic.
وعمره 3 سنوات ماتت اخته بالمصران الزايد وكان عمرها سبع سنوات
ومات ابوه بعد اسابيع خلال رلة صيد بسبب الالتهاب الرئوي
With the option of returning to Norway to live with relatives, Dahl's mother decided to remain in Wales because her husband Harald had wished to have their children educated in British schools, which he considered the world's best.
Dahl first attended
The Cathedral School, Llandaff
. At the age of eight, he and four of his friends (one named Thwaites) were
caned
by the headmaster after putting a dead mouse in a jar of gobstoppers at the local sweet shop, which was owned by a "mean and loathsome" old woman called Mrs Pratchett. This was known amongst the five boys as the "
Great Mouse Plot of 1924
".
[10]
Thereafter, he transferred to a
boarding school
in England: Saint Peter's in
Weston-super-Mare
. Roald's parents had wanted him to be educated at an English
public school
and, because of a then regular ferry link across the Bristol Channel, this proved to be the nearest. His time at Saint Peter's was an unpleasant experience for him. He was very homesick and wrote to his mother every week, but never revealed to her his unhappiness, being under the pressure of school censorship. Only after her death in 1967 did he find out that she had saved every single one of his letters, in small bundles held together with green tape.
[11]
Dahl wrote about his time at St. Peter's in his autobiography
Boy: Tales of Childhood
.
[12]
From 1929, he attended
Repton School
in Derbyshire, where, according to
Boy: Tales of Childhood
, a friend named Michael was viciously caned by headmaster
Geoffrey Fisher
, the man who later became the
Archbishop of Canterbury
and crowned
the Queen
in 1953. (However, according to Dahl's biographer
Jeremy Treglown
,
[13]
the caning took place in May 1933, a year after Fisher had left Repton. The headmaster concerned was in fact J.T. Christie, Fisher's successor.) This caused Dahl to "have doubts about religion and even about God".
[14]
He was never seen as a particularly talented writer in his school years, with one of his English teachers writing in his school report "I have never met anybody who so persistently writes words meaning the exact opposite of what is intended,"
[15]
Dahl was exceptionally tall, reaching 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m) in adult life.
[16]
He excelled at sports, being made captain of the school
fives
and
squash
teams, and also playing for the
football
team.
[17]
As well as having a passion for literature, he also developed an interest in photography.
[18]
During his years at Repton,
Cadbury
, the chocolate company, would occasionally send boxes of new chocolates to the school to be tested by the pupils. Dahl apparently used to dream of inventing a new chocolate bar that would win the praise of Mr. Cadbury himself, and this proved the inspiration for him to write his third book for children,
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
(1963) and include references to chocolate in other books for children.
[19]
Throughout his childhood and adolescent years, Dahl spent his summer holidays with his mother's family in Norway. His childhood and first job selling kerosene in
Midsomer Norton
and surrounding villages in
Somerset
,
south West
England are subjects in
Boy: Tales of Childhood
.
[20]
The main child character in his 1983 book
The Witches
is a British boy of Norwegian descent, whose grandmother is still living in Norway.
[21]
After finishing his schooling, he spent three weeks hiking through
Newfoundland
with the Public Schools' Exploring Society (now known as
BSES Expeditions
).
[22]
In July 1934, Dahl joined the
Shell Petroleum
Company. Following two years of training in the United Kingdom, he was transferred to
Dar-es-Salaam
,
Tanganyika
(now
Tanzania
). Along with the only two other Shell employees in the entire territory, he lived in luxury in the Shell House outside Dar-es-Salaam, with a
cook
and personal
servants
. While out on assignments supplying oil to customers across Tanganyika, he encountered
black mambas
and lions, amongst other
wildlife
.
[14]
In August 1939, as World War II loomed, plans were made to round up the hundreds of Germans in
Dar-es-Salaam
. Dahl was made an officer in the
King's African Rifles
, commanding a platoon of
Askaris
, indigenous troops serving in the colonial army.
[23]
In November 1939, Dahl joined the
Royal Air Force
as an
Aircraftman
. After a 600-mile (970 km) car journey from Dar-es-Salaam to
Nairobi
, he was accepted for flight training with 16 other men, of whom only two others survived the war. With seven hours and 40 minutes experience in a
De Havilland Tiger Moth
, he flew solo;
[24]
Dahl enjoyed watching the wildlife of
Kenya
during his flights. He continued to advanced flying training in
Iraq
, at
RAF Habbaniya
, 50 miles (80 km) west of
Baghdad
. He was promoted to
Leading Aircraftman
on 24 August 1940.
[25]
Following six months' training on
Hawker Harts
, Dahl was made an
Acting Pilot Officer
.
He was assigned to
No. 80 Squadron RAF
, flying obsolete
Gloster Gladiators
, the last
biplane
fighter aircraft
used by the RAF. Dahl was surprised to find that he would not receive any specialised training in
aerial combat
, or in flying Gladiators. On 19 September 1940, Dahl was ordered to fly his Gladiator from Abu Sueir in
Egypt
, on to Amiriya to refuel, and again to Fouka in
Libya
for a second refuelling. From there he would fly to 80 Squadron's forward
airstrip
30 miles (48 km) south of
Mersa Matruh
. On the final leg, he could not find the airstrip and, running low on
fuel
and with night approaching, he was forced to attempt a
landing
in the desert. The undercarriage hit a boulder and the aircraft crashed, fracturing his skull, smashing his nose, and temporarily blinding him.
[26]
He managed to drag himself away from the blazing wreckage and passed out. Later, he wrote about the crash for his first published work.
[26]
Dahl was rescued and taken to a
first-aid
post in Mersa Matruh, where he regained consciousness, but not his sight, and was then taken by train to the Royal Navy hospital in
Alexandria
. There he fell in and out of love with a nurse, Mary Welland. An RAF inquiry into the crash revealed that the location to which he had been told to fly was completely wrong, and he had mistakenly been sent instead to the
no man's land
between the Allied and Italian forces.
[27]
In February 1941, Dahl was discharged from hospital and passed fully fit for flying duties. By this time, 80 Squadron had been transferred to the
Greek campaign
and based at
Eleusina
, near
Athens
. The squadron was now equipped with
Hawker Hurricanes
. Dahl flew a replacement Hurricane across the Mediterranean Sea in April 1941, after seven hours flying Hurricanes. By this stage in the Greek campaign, the RAF had only 18 combat aircraft in Greece: 14 Hurricanes and four
Bristol Blenheim
light bombers. Dahl saw his first aerial combat on 15 April 1941, while flying alone over the city of
Chalcis
. He attacked six
Junkers Ju-88s
that were bombing ships and shot one down. On 16 April in another air battle, he shot down another Ju-88.
[28]
On 20 April 1941, Dahl took part in the "Battle of Athens", alongside the highest-scoring British Commonwealth ace of World War II,
Pat Pattle
and Dahl's friend
David Coke
. Of 12 Hurricanes involved, five were shot down and four of their pilots killed, including Pattle. Greek observers on the ground counted 22 German aircraft downed, but because of the confusion of the aerial engagement, none of the pilots knew which plane they had shot down. Dahl described it as
"an endless blur of enemy fighters whizzing towards me from every side".
[29]
In May, as the Germans were pressing on Athens, Dahl was evacuated to Egypt. His squadron was reassembled in
Haifa
. From there, Dahl flew sorties every day for a period of four weeks, shooting down a
Vichy French Air Force
Potez 63
on 8 June and another Ju-88 on 15 June, but he then began to get severe headaches that caused him to
black out
. He was invalided home to Britain. Though at this time Dahl was only an
Acting Pilot Officer
, in September 1941 he was simultaneously confirmed as a
Pilot Officer
and promoted to
Flying Officer
.
[30]
Dahl began writing in 1942, after he was transferred to Washington, D.C. as Assistant
Air Attaché
. His first published work, in 1 August 1942 issue of
The Saturday Evening Post
, was "Shot Down Over Libya" which described the crash of his Gloster Gladiator.
C. S. Forester
had asked Dahl to write down some RAF anecdotes so that he could shape them into a story. After Forester read what Dahl had given him, he decided to publish the story exactly as Dahl had written it. The original title of the article was "A Piece of Cake" but the title was changed to sound more dramatic, despite the fact that he was not actually shot down.
[27]
Dahl was promoted to
Flight Lieutenant
in August 1942.
[31]
During the war, Forester worked for the British Information Service and was writing propaganda for the Allied cause, mainly for American consumption.
[32]
This work introduced Dahl to espionage and the activities of the Canadian spymaster
William Stephenson
, known by the codename "Intrepid".
[33]
During the war, Dahl supplied intelligence from Washington to Stephenson and his organisation known as
British Security Coordination
, which was part of
MI6
. He was revealed in the 1980s to have been serving to help promote Britain's interests and message in the United States and to combat the "
America First
" movement, working with such other well known agents as
Ian Fleming
and
David Ogilvy
.
[34]
Dahl was once sent back to Britain by
British Embassy
officials, supposedly for misconduct – "I got booted out by the big boys," he said. Stephenson promptly sent him back to Washington—with a promotion to
Wing Commander
.
[35]
Towards the end of the war, Dahl wrote some of the history of the secret organisation and he and Stephenson remained friends for decades after the war.
[36]
Upon the war's conclusion, Dahl held the rank of a temporary
Wing Commander
(substantive
Flight Lieutenant
). Owing to his accident in 1940 having left him with excruciating headaches while flying, in August 1946 he was invalided out of the RAF. He left the service with the substantive rank of
Squadron Leader
.
[37]
His record of five aerial victories, qualifying him as a
flying ace
, has been confirmed by post-war research and cross-referenced in Axis records, although it is most likely that he scored more than that during 20 April 1941 when 22 German aircraft were shot down.
[38]
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