If you haven’t heard Roald Dahl’s name, or haven’t read any of his novels you haven’t read many famous children books. His beautiful poems, his exciting short stories and his great novels have fancied people in generations, all over the world.

His texts

Many people would say that “James and the giant peach” was the start of his writing career. That’s wrong. During the second world war he was stationed in Washington for a few months. While he

was there he met a journalist who wanted him to write about some of his experience as a soldier. He decided to do it, after a couple of weeks he sent his piece to the journalist. The journalist was so impressed that he wrote a letter back and said: ”Did you know that you was a writer, I haven’t changed a single word.” The piece was published anonymous in the “Saturday evening post.” The piece was named “Shot Down Over Libya” and was a great hit.

 

After the war Roald started writing short stories for adults.

 

In the 1960’s he became a father himself and started telling his children bed times stories. From out of this his children books figures grew, and became real. His first children book was “James and the giant peach.” He wasn’t very pleased with that book himself, but the audiences loved it. His biggest success came in 1964 when he published “Charlie and the chocolate factory.” In China alone it sold over two million copy’s. I, myself have read “The Witches”, “Charlie and the chocolate factory”, “Matilda” and money more. I will deeply recommend all of them, but “Matilda” is my favourite.

 

His family and life

Roald Dahl was born in Llandaff, Wales in September 13th in 1916. Both of his parents were Norwegians and he was the only son of a second marriage. His father died when he was only three and his mother Sofie, was left alone to raise two step children and four of her own children. Roald admired his mother deeply. The grandmother figure in “The Withes” was dedicated to her.

 

His life was filled with tragedies. His first son suffered brain damage after a car accident when hi was only five months old. In 1965 his first wife got three strokes in a very short period. She couldn’t move a single muscle in her body. At the time she was preagment and Roald knew that if she lost motivation she would fade away forever. He gathered all of their friends and family and helped her trough every single moment of every single day. Thanks to him she recovered and gave birth to a healthy baby and she could go back to her acting career.

 

You might think this was enough tragedy for one man, but right before his death his own stepdaughter died of a brain tumour. He had a close relationship with this daughter and he loved her deeply.

 

Roald Dahl died in November 23th 1990 at the age of 74. He left a great treasure behind him. A treasure which will be remembered for many decades to come.