Alan Bullock
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Table of Contents
Occupation
Family Info
Siblings
Spouses
Children
About the Roald Dahl
Roald Dahlwas a British author of popular children’s literature and short stories, a poet, screenwriter and a wartime fighter ace. His books have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. He has been called “one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century”.
Dahl was born in Wales to affluent Norwegian immigrant parents, and lived for most of his life in England. He served in the Royal Air Forceduring the Second World War. He became a fighter pilot and, subsequently, an intelligence officer, rising to the rank of acting wing commander. He rose to prominence as a writer in the 1940s with works for children and for adults, and he became one of the world’s best-selling authors. His awards for contribution to literature include the 1983 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the British Book Awards’ Children’s Author of the Year in 1990. In 2008, The Times placed Dahl 16th on its list of “The 50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945”. In 2021, Forbes ranked him the top-earning dead celebrity.
Dahl’s short stories are known for their unexpected endings, and his children’s books for their unsentimental, macabre, often darkly comic mood, featuring villainous adult enemies of the child characters. His children’s books champion the kindhearted and feature an underlying warm sentiment. His works for children include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG, The Twits, George’s Marvellous Medicine and Danny, the Champion of the World. His works for older audiences include the short story collections Tales of the Unexpected and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More.
Frequently Asked Questions
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- 1.
Pain was something we were expected to endure. But I doubt very much if you would be entirely happy today if a doctor threw a towel in your face and jumped on you with a knife.
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- 2.
I shot down some German planes and I got shot down myself, crashing in a burst of flames and crawling out, getting rescued by brave soldiers.
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- 3.
The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn’t go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him.
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- 4.
A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.
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- 5.
The Bristol Channel was always my guide, and I was always able to draw an imaginary line from my bed to our house over in Wales. It was a great comfort.
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- 6.
To shipbrokers, coal was black gold.
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- 7.
Pear Drops were exciting because they had a dangerous taste. All of us were warned against eating them, and the result was that we ate them more than ever.
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- 8.
When I walked to school in the mornings I would start out alone but would pick up four other boys along the way. We would set out together after school across the village green.
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- 9.
All Norwegian children learn to swim when they are very young because if you can’t swim it is difficult to find a place to bathe.
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- 10.
The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it.
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- 11.
Nowadays you can go anywhere in the world in a few hours, and nothing is fabulous any more.
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- 12.
I am only 8 years old, I told myself. No little boy of 8 has ever murdered anyone. It’s not possible.
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- 13.
I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours, a fixed salary, and very little original thinking to do.
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- 14.
Nobody gets a nervous breakdown or a heart attack from selling kerosene to gentle country folk from the back of a tanker in Somerset.
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- 15.
Prayers were held in Assembly Hall. We all perched in rows on wooden benches while teachers sat up on the platform in armchairs, facing us.
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- 16.
A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.
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- 17.
All through my school life I was appalled by the fact that masters and senior boys were allowed quite literally to wound other boys, and sometimes very severely.
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- 18.
Though my father was Norwegian, he always wrote his diaries in perfect English.
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- 19.
My father was a Norwegian who came from a small town near Oslo. He broke his arm at the elbow when he was 14, and they amputated it.
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- 20.
When I was 2, we moved into an imposing country mansion 8 miles west of Cardiff, Wales.
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- 21.
I do have a blurred memory of sitting on the stairs and trying over and over again to tie one of my shoelaces, but that is all that comes back to me of school itself.
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- 22.
Did they preach one thing and practice another, these men of God?
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- 23.
Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.
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- 24.
An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.
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- 25.
I was a fighter pilot, flying Hurricanes all round the Mediterranean. I flew in the Western Desert of Libya, in Greece, in Syria, in Iraq and in Egypt.
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- 26.
Unless you have been to boarding-school when you are very young, it is absolutely impossible to appreciate the delights of living at home.
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- 27.
A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom.
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