Page 21 - Great Elizabethans

FLYING THE NEST
When he left school, Roald didn’t want to go to university – he wanted to find a job that would send him to some of the world’s most beautiful and far-flung places. He joined the Shell Petroleum Company and went to Tanzania in East Africa.
When the Second World War broke out, in 1939, Roald joined the Royal Air Force and was taught to fly a fighter plane. Cramming himself into the tiny cockpit was very uncomfortable for him, as he was almost 2 metres tall! Roald was a gifted pilot, but one day his plane crash- landed in Egypt and he was seriously injured. He spent the rest of the war working at a desk.
Before Roald Dahl’s stories, hardly anyone knew the word ‘gremlin’ – meaning a little mischievous creature that makes machinery go wrong. He learned it working in the RAF, and used it for his book, The Gremlins, published in 1943. Roald also invented more than 500 new words and names during his writing career!
WRITING STORIES
After the war Roald began making his living as a writer, mainly writing stories for grown-ups. In 1953, he married a film actor, Patricia Neal, and they had five children together. Through telling his children bedtime stories, Roald learned how to hold their attention and make them
laugh – and he started to put these skills to use when writing his first children’s books.
When James and the Giant Peach – the story of a little boy with two cruel aunts,
a huge peach and some enormous insects – was published in 1961, it was an instant hit. After that, Roald went on to write over 20 books for children, including
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr Fox, George’s Marvellous Medicine, Matilda, The Twits, The Witches, Danny, the Champion of the World
and The BFG. The story of Matilda – a little girl with horrible parents, who loves reading and uses the power of her mind to move objects and fight back against cruel grown-ups – is one of Roald’s best-known and best-loved tales.
Gruesome or scary things often happen in Roald’s books – children may be eaten by giants, turned into mice, sucked up pipes or shrunk to a tiny size – but
his tough, clever young heroes still come out on top, and young readers still love his stories! His books have sold more than 200 million copies worldwide.
Roald wasn’t perfect though – he could be outspoken, and he held some prejudiced views about Jewish people that were hurtful and wrong. In 2020, his
family apologised for the harm these views caused.
Roald died in 1990, when he was 74 years old, leaving behind a legacy of
wonderful words and strange, exciting creations.
Roald Dahl’s granddaughter Sophie Dahl is also a writer! She wrote her first book for children in 2019.
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