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This was a tribute to his own mother, whose talent for storytelling was passed on to him. At Christmas in , the farm where the Dahl family lived was put up for sale. These experiences he never forgot and they were often reflected in his stories which ranged from grotesque to ingenious. In the early s, Dahl attended Repton School in Derbyshire, known for arts and literature and boasting several novelists and poets as former students. Dahl was influenced by his English teacher and encouraged to use imaginative language but written in short, clear and punctually correct sentences. By his mid teenage years he had grown to six foot five inches tall which helped him to excel in certain sports and meant he was left alone by the unpleasant pupils in his last couple of years at school. After passing his exams and leaving school, Dahl wanted some adventure. The expedition implemented some strong character building and culminated in a twenty-day march through bogs and swamps carrying up to pounds on their backs. Upon completion of the trip, Dahl took a job for a Petroleum company later becoming part of Royal Dutch Shell. He worked in an office in London for two years and then somewhere else in England before finally after four years at the company being posted to Africa. Prior to being sent to Kenya, Dahl spent time away from work developing photographs, reading novels and dabbled in writing comic sketches. Aged 22, his time in Africa was spent supplying oil to various customers there, mainly for farm equipment but also for any aviation requirements. He was sent to various places in Kenya and then to what is now Tanzania. He lived in luxury and spent much of his free time playing sports and socialising and drinking at cocktail parties. Whilst in Africa, the Second World War had begun. Dahl enlisted as a Special Constable and was in charge of a group of native soldiers. Their job was to arrest any fleeing German nationals and escort them to the British internment camps that had been built. As more soldiers arrived after the outbreak of war, Dahl dreamt of seeing more of Africa and decided to join the Royal Air Force as a pilot. He travelled to Nairobi, passed his medical and began his training program. After 6 weeks and 50 hours of flying time, he transferred to Iraq to complete his pilot training. Six months later in September he was sent to the desert in Egypt to see his first action in the air. He was ordered to fly from Egypt to Libya but was unable to locate the airstrip and landed in the desert, hitting a boulder and fracturing his skull. Since his departure in , he has written and directed a number of award-winning television programmes, including a film about Roald Dahl for the BBC. Storyteller : The Life of Roald Dahl. Donald Sturrock. He pushed children's literature into uncharted territory and almost twenty years after his death his popularity continues to grow - worldwide sales of his books have now topped million. The man behind the stories, however, remains an enigma. Dahl was a single-minded adventurer, an eternal child, and his public persona was often controversial. The squadron was now equipped with Hawker Hurricanes. Dahl flew a replacement Hurricane across the Mediterranean Sea in April , after seven hours' experience flying Hurricanes. Dahl flew in his first aerial combat on 15 April , 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 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 aircraft they had shot down. Dahl described it as "an endless blur of enemy fighters whizzing towards me from every side". 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 began to get severe headaches that caused him to black out. He was invalided home to Britain where he stayed with his mother in Buckinghamshire. He attempted to recover his health enough to become an instructor. Initially resistant, Dahl was finally persuaded by Balfour to accept, and took passage on the MS Batory from Glasgow a few days later. He arrived in Halifax, Canada, on 14 April, after which he took a sleeper train to Montreal. Coming from war-starved Britain in what was a wartime period of rationing in the United Kingdom , Dahl was amazed by the wealth of food and amenities to be had in North America. But after ten days in his new posting, Dahl strongly disliked it, feeling he had taken on "a most ungodly unimportant job". People were getting killed. I had been flying around, seeing horrible things. Now, almost instantly, I found myself in the middle of a pre-war cocktail party in America. Dahl was unimpressed by his office in the British Air Mission, attached to the embassy. He was also unimpressed by the ambassador, Lord Halifax , with whom he sometimes played tennis and whom he described as "a courtly English gentleman". Dahl socialized with Charles E. At this time Dahl met the noted British novelist C. Forester , who was also working to aid the British war effort. Forester worked for the British Ministry of Information and was writing propaganda for the Allied cause, mainly for American consumption. After Forester read what Dahl had given him, he decided to publish the story exactly as Dahl had written it. Dahl was promoted to flight lieutenant war-substantive in August This work introduced Dahl to espionage and the activities of the Canadian spymaster William Stephenson , known by the codename "Intrepid". Stephenson promptly sent him back to Washington—with a promotion to wing commander rank. Upon the war's conclusion, Dahl held the rank of a temporary wing commander substantive flight lieutenant. Owing to the severity of his injuries from the accident, he was pronounced unfit for further service and was invalided out of the RAF in August He left the service with the substantive rank of squadron leader. It is most likely that he scored more than those victories during 20 April , when 22 German aircraft were shot down. Their marriage lasted for 30 years and they had five children:. On 5 December , four-month-old Theo Dahl was severely injured when his baby carriage was struck by a taxicab in New York City. For a time, he suffered from hydrocephalus. As a result, his father became involved in the development of what became known as the " Wade- Dahl-Till " or WDT valve, a device to improve the shunt used to alleviate the condition. In November , Dahl's daughter Olivia died of measles encephalitis , age seven. Her death left Dahl "limp with despair", and feeling guilty about not having been able to do anything for her. He was dismayed by Fisher telling him that, although Olivia was in Paradise, her beloved dog Rowley would never join her there. I sat there wondering if this great and famous churchman really knew what he was talking about and whether he knew anything at all about God or heaven, and if he didn't, then who in the world did? In , his wife Patricia Neal suffered three burst cerebral aneurysms while pregnant with their fifth child, Lucy. Dahl took control of her rehabilitation over the next months; Neal had to re-learn to talk and walk, but she managed to return to her acting career. Felicity known as Liccy gave up her job and moved into Gipsy House , Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire, which had been Dahl's home since He reportedly wanted a knighthood so that his wife would be Lady Dahl. A panel of seven academics, journalists and historians named Dahl among the group of people in the UK "whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands and given the age its character". Dahl's first published work, inspired by a meeting with C. Forester , was "A Piece of Cake", on 1 August His first children's book was The Gremlins , published in , about mischievous little creatures that were part of Royal Air Force folklore. Dahl also had a successful parallel career as the writer of macabre adult short stories, which often blended humour and innocence with surprising plot twists. Dahl wrote more than 60 short stories ; they have appeared in numerous collections, some only being published in book form after his death. His three Edgar Awards were given for: in , the collection Someone Like You ; in , the story " The Landlady "; and in , the episode of Tales of the Unexpected based on " Skin ". One of his more famous adult stories, "The Smoker", also known as " Man from the South ", was filmed twice as both and episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents , filmed as a episode of Tales Of The Unexpected , and also adapted into Quentin Tarantino 's segment of the film Four Rooms Dahl was credited with teleplay for two episodes, and four of his episodes were directed by Hitchcock himself, an example of which was " Lamb to the Slaughter " Dahl acquired a traditional Romanichal vardo in the s, and the family used it as a playhouse for his children at home in Great Missenden , Buckinghamshire. He later used the vardo as a writing room, where he wrote Danny, the Champion of the World in For example, the village library was the inspiration for Mrs Phelps' library in Matilda , where the title character devours classic literature by the age of four. His short story collection Tales of the Unexpected was adapted to a successful TV series of the same name , beginning with "Man from the South". Some of Dahl's short stories are supposed to be extracts from the diary of his fictional Uncle Oswald, a rich gentleman whose sexual exploits form the subject of these stories. The last book published in his lifetime, Esio Trot , released in January , marked a change in style for the author. Dahl's children's works are usually told from the point of view of a child. They typically involve adult villains who hate and mistreat children, and feature at least one "good" adult to counteract the villain s. Adult villains are drawn in terrifying detail, before they are exposed as liars and hypocrites, and brought tumbling down with retributive justice, either by a sudden magic or the superior acuity of the children they mistreat. While his whimsical fantasy stories feature an underlying warm sentiment, they are often juxtaposed with grotesque, darkly comic and sometimes harshly violent scenarios. Class-conscious themes also surface in works such as Fantastic Mr Fox and Danny, the Champion of the World where the unpleasant wealthy neighbours are outwitted. Dahl also features characters who are very fat, usually children. All of these characters with the possible exception of Bruce Bogtrotter are either villains or simply unpleasant gluttons. They are usually punished for this: Augustus Gloop drinks from Willy Wonka 's chocolate river, disregarding the adults who tell him not to, and falls in, getting sucked up a pipe and nearly being turned into fudge. In Matilda , Bruce Bogtrotter steals cake from the evil headmistress, Miss Trunchbull , and is forced to eat a gigantic chocolate cake in front of the school. In The Witches , Bruno Jenkins is lured by the witches whose leader is the Grand High Witch into their convention with the promise of chocolate, before they turn him into a mouse. When Dahl was a boy his mother used to tell him and his sisters tales about trolls and other mythical Norwegian creatures, and some of his children's books contain references or elements inspired by these stories, such as the giants in The BFG , the fox family in Fantastic Mr Fox and the trolls in The Minpins. Receiving the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement , Dahl encouraged his children and his readers to let their imagination run free. His daughter Lucy stated "his spirit was so large and so big he taught us to believe in magic. Dahl was also famous for his inventive, playful use of language, which was a key element to his writing. He invented new words by scribbling down his words before swapping letters around and adopting spoonerisms and malapropisms. He didn't always explain what his words meant, but children can work them out because they often sound like a word they know, and he loved using onomatopoeia. For example, you know that something lickswishy and delumptious is good to eat, whereas something uckyslush or rotsome is definitely not! He also used sounds that children love to say, like squishous and squizzle , or fizzlecrump and fizzwiggler. Grant and aired on 22 September , commemorated Dahl's 90th birthday and also celebrated his impact as a children's author in popular culture. In , marking the centenary of Dahl's birth, Rennie compiled The Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary which includes many of his invented words and their meaning. Dahl's collection of poems Revolting Rhymes is recorded in audiobook form, and narrated by actor Alan Cumming. For a brief period in the s, Dahl wrote screenplays. Dahl later disowned the film, saying he was "disappointed" because "he thought it placed too much emphasis on Willy Wonka and not enough on Charlie". This resulted in his refusal for any more versions of the book to be made in his lifetime, as well as an adaptation for the sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. A major part of Dahl's literary influences stemmed from his childhood. In his younger days, he was an avid reader, especially awed by fantastic tales of heroism and triumph. Amongst his favourite authors were Rudyard Kipling , Charles Dickens , William Makepeace Thackeray and Frederick Marryat , and their works made a lasting mark on his life and writing. The author clearly felt compelled to warn his young readers about the evils of the world, taking the lesson from earlier fairy tales that they could stand hard truths and would be the stronger for hearing them. Dahl travelled to visit Thomas's hut in Carmarthenshire, Wales in the s and, after taking a look inside, decided to make a replica of it to write in. Dahl liked ghost stories, and claimed that Trolls by Jonas Lie was one of the finest ghost stories ever written. While he was still a youngster, his mother, Sofie Dahl, related traditional Norwegian myths and legends from her native homeland to Dahl and his sisters. Dahl always maintained that his mother and her stories had a strong influence on his writing. In one interview, he mentioned: "She was a great teller of tales. Her memory was prodigious and nothing that ever happened to her in her life was forgotten. In , Dahl hosted and wrote for a science fiction and horror television anthology series called Way Out , which preceded the Twilight Zone series on the CBS network for 14 episodes from March to July. Dahl introduced on camera all the episodes of the first two series, which bore the full title Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected. Roald Dahl died on 23 November , at the age of 74 of a rare cancer of the blood, myelodysplastic syndrome , in Oxford , [] and was buried in the cemetery at the Church of St Peter and St Paul, Great Missenden , Buckinghamshire, England. According to his granddaughter, the family gave him a "sort of Viking funeral ". He was buried with his snooker cues , some very good burgundy , chocolates, HB pencils and a power saw. Today, children continue to leave toys and flowers by his grave. Plass is Norwegian for "place" or "square", alluding to the writer's Norwegian roots. There have also been calls from the public for a permanent statue of him to be erected in Cardiff. Dahl's charitable commitments in the fields of neurology , haematology and literacy during his life have been continued by his widow since his death, through Roald Dahl's Marvellous Children's Charity, formerly known as the Roald Dahl Foundation. It was unveiled by his widow Felicity and son Theo. For instance film director Tim Burton recalled from childhood "the second layer [after Dr. Seuss ] of connecting to a writer who gets the idea of the modern fable — and the mixture of light and darkness, and not speaking down to kids, and the kind of politically incorrect humour that kids get. I've always like that, and it's shaped everything I've felt that I've done. Dahl has an incredibly distinctive style: his subversive , unpredictable plots, musical prose and caustic wit are impossible to imitate. And yet his stories have proved astonishingly malleable. Often adapted by equally idiosyncratic writers and directors, when translated onto stage and screen, his works seamlessly take on the impression of their new maker. Like in many of his stories, Dahl offers a narrative where troublemaking is rewarded, and games and tricks are more successful than following rules. Right across his body of work, playfulness and inventiveness are always prized over boring qualities like obedience and deference. In Dahl's world, creative disruption is presented in such an appealing, delicious light, that you can't help but join in the fun. The Independent , Regarded as "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century", [5] Dahl was named by The Times one of the 50 greatest British writers since Rowling named Charlie and the Chocolate Factory one of her top ten books every child should read. In , Dahl was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork — the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover — to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life he most admires. I am anti-Israel. Dahl told a reporter in "There's a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it's a kind of lack of generosity towards non- Jews. I mean there is always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason. It was very much hushed up in the newspapers because they are primarily Jewish-owned. I'm certainly anti-Israeli and I've become antisemitic in as much as that you get a Jewish person in another country like England strongly supporting Zionism. Could have been pro-Arab or pro-Jew. There was no consistent line. Storyteller: The Life Of Roald Dahl, By Donald Sturrock | The Independent

Roald Dahl had much the same feeling when encountering the glory of flight for the first time. Later in , Dahl joined his squadron that now flew in Greece. He would now be piloting a Hurricane and in April shot down his first enemy plane. He continued to patrol the skies until after ten days in Greece, was evacuated back to Egypt. Later the headaches he was still suffering became worse and he started blacking out. Dahl was no longer able to fly and after three years away, returned to England, but his 32 days as an active fighter pilot gave him something to write about. While attending a meal in a club, Dahl met a member of parliament who was impressed with his conversation and stories and offered Dahl a job in the British embassy in Washington D. He disliked his job which was to give pro-British speeches to try and tie the Americans into the British war effort. What he lacked in factual accuracy he made up for with an eye for peculiar detail and invention. He continued to write, composing stories about gremlins in aeroplanes causing mechanical problems as if they were real creatures. One of his stories was forwarded to Disney who were interested in turning it into a feature film. He gave all the royalties from the book to charity, except for the cost of a set of false teeth made out of gold and platinum as he had had most of his teeth replaced with artificial replacements when he was After the war and after four years in America, Dahl returned again to England in and chose to live in the countryside. His lust for adventure had subsided and he was adamant on becoming a fulltime writer. He dabbled in some journalism and creepy short stories as well as writing novels but was not overly successful and suffered financial difficulties at times, so he returned across the Atlantic to New York City. He met an American actress called Patricia Neil and they married in They went on to have five children. Dahl gave up aspirations of being a novelist and focused on short stories. His stories were taking longer and longer to write so he was convinced by his literary agent to try writing a story for children. A valve was fitted to drain the fluid from his brain in hospital but it kept becoming blocked. Dahl immediately stopped writing, learnt about the intricacies of the problem and invented a new valve with two friends — a neurosurgeon and a toymaker. The superior valve cost less than a third of the price of the current solution as they refused to make any money from it and was successfully used on nearly three thousand children. Dahl and his family returned to a cottage in England which had an annex built on the side of it which he used as his writing hut. His daughter Olivia died from Measles aged seven. A third catastrophe hit the family when his wife suffered three strokes in , aged Dahl supervised and worked with her constantly during her rehabilitation to help her walk and talk again. She even returned to acting, receiving an Oscar nomination in It became an instant bestseller. Dahl embarked on a ten year affair that eventually ended in divorce and him remarrying but during this time he continued to produce books. Six more followed in the s despite Dahl suffering illness through much of the decade. His books became more and more successful as the years went on. He had quarrels with many people ranging from friends and family to publishing companies. He is the creator of educational YouTube channels Eudaimonia and The Art of Improvement which together have over , subscribers. For years he had been sullen about being known as a movie star's husband; now here was his chance to have his revenge on her in the kind of way that might have been the payoff to one of those short stories that the New Yorker turned down as just too cruel. This need to be always in charge — not to mention the bouts of anti-semitism, womanising, and a kind of generalised ungraciousness — makes Dahl a tricky customer for a biographer. Especially when, as in the case of Donald Sturrock, he has been chosen by the Dahl family to write the closest thing to an authorised life. Sturrock explains in his introduction that he has had access to thousands of previously unseen letters and drafts. But exactly what concessions he has had to make in return are not clear, and one senses a strain in the book's tone whenever more controversial aspects of his subject's life come into view. In particular, Sturrock's handling of Dahl's decade-long affair with Felicity Crosland, for whom he eventually left a distraught and still vulnerable Patricia Neal, feels as if it is treading on egg shells. And Sturrock is probably quite right to mind his Ps and Qs, for he only snagged this plum job because Dahl took away the mandate from someone else shortly before his death. His biography was to have been written by his clever young American publisher Stephen Roxburgh, but — the old story — Dahl fell out with him over the editing of Matilda and decided that some punishment was in order. The great man may no longer be with us, but there is something about his slightly malign spirit that means you would not want to cross him even 20 years after his death. Sturrock's task is made more complicated by the fact that this is not the first scholarly biography to appear. In Jeremy Treglown published an excellent unauthorised account of Dahl's life that drew on the massive correspondence lodged in his many publishers' and agents' archives around the world. Treglown also, crucially, had access to a garrulous Neal who, while nominally reconciled with Dahl and Crosland, had no particular reason to be nice about them. This first important account of Dahl's life, then, tended at times towards what might politely be called the sceptical, especially when it came to Dahl's persistent mythmaking about his wartime flying experiences and his first marriage. Certainly by choosing Sturrock as their chronicler the Dahls have appointed someone whose fandom they can count on — as a young BBC producer in the s Sturrock worked on a documentary about Dahl and managed to remain friends with him — and who can be guaranteed to tell the story of his difficult personality as gently as possible. The result is by no means a whitewash, but it is an attempt to nudge the picture in favour of a man who, despite so many reasons to dislike him, remains one of the greatest forces for good in children's literature of the past 50 years. Roald Dahl. Kathryn Hughes on a careful new biography of the man who transformed children's literature. Roald Dahl writing at home. Kathryn Hughes. Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock

When Dahl became a parent, the bad luck continued. In New York, his 4-month-old son was hit so hard by a taxi that his baby carriage flew 40 feet and slammed into a parked bus, shattering his skull. He survived, barely. Then his year-old wife, the actress Patricia Neal, had an aneurysm and fell into a coma for three weeks. He could, at times, be thoughtful and charming. He gave much of his time and massive literary profits to charity. And he responded to family crises with almost incredible courage and ingenuity—virtues he assigned, not incidentally, to all the heroes of his stories. When his wife emerged from her coma, Dahl coached her through a grueling some said cruel rehabilitation regimen that went on to revolutionize modern stroke treatment. But Dahl was also, much of the time, world-historically unpleasant. As a boy he wrapped his sister in pillows and shot BBs at her. As an adult he picked loud fights at dinner parties just to create a spectacle. He bullied editors, sold out friends, and insulted his children. He was a control freak of delight. Early in his career, he was determined to be the next Hemingway or Fitzgerald. Thank God for that. It sets up a premise, coldly follows the implied narrative logic, and nearly always ends with a twist. OMG: The wife is missing her fingers! There are no accidents or messiness or flights of inspiration. Already a subscriber? Log in or link your magazine subscription. Account Profile. Working for Shell in East Africa he endured malaria and jungle hardships. When war broke out and he became an RAF pilot, he was one of only two of his squadron who survived, sustained lifelong injuries when he crashed into the desert, and learnt what it was to kill. All this in his formative years. Adulthood brought catastrophic head injuries in a traffic accident to his son Theo in babyhood; the death of his seven-year-old daughter Olivia from encephalitis after measles ; cerebral haemorrhages that disabled his wife, the Hollywood actor Patricia Neal, aged 39; the sudden death, from an aneurysm, of his stepdaughter Lorina at This more-than-fair share of tragedies also contrast with some exceptional good fortune, attributable to talent and charisma. Dahl's first short stories met immediate success. A story about Gremlins won him a friendship with Walt Disney and a commission from Roosevelt's vice-president, Henry Wallace. As a handsome flying ace employed by the RAF in Washington, and by the shadier intelligence outfit the British Security Coordination, he was feted in the grandest circles. He dined with Ginger Rogers, befriended Howard Hawks, stayed with Hoagy Carmichael, acquired a rich patron, Charles Marsh, and slept with Martha Gellhorn while she was still married to Ernest Hemingway as well as with a good many other older, glamorous, wealthy women. It makes for an eventful book. Sturrock shows with vivid examples that Dahl was unfaithful, provocative and sometimes cruel, but the promiscuous and opinionated are interesting to read about if not comfortable to live with. He was not always sensitive: he failed to appreciate how unhappy his daughter Lucy was at school until she set fire to it. But we learn that he could be loving especially to his second wife, Felicity , entertaining and generous. In adversity he was practical, resilient and inventive. When Pat was ill, he subjected her to a rigorous regime which enabled her to return to the stage in an astonishingly short time. It seemed harsh, but was just what was needed. When Theo was injured, Dahl found a toymaker who constructed a new valve to his own design that did not fail, and went on to be used on 3, children. It even saved the life of his agent's son. Sturrock provides the bigger picture, from Norwegian fishing villages to British public schools. He also offers telling details — that, for instance, while his mother kept all Roald's letters, he burnt hers; that Dahl preferred to make love in the dark; that he had all his teeth out in his twenties; and that he served bars of chocolate to dinner guests from a red plastic box a more acceptable indulgence when you don't have your own teeth. Sturrock is restrained about analysing Dahl's psychology, but his evidence makes it unsurprising that Dahl found his metier regressing to the age of seven in his writing hut. What is most astonishing is not that there was a dark strain in Dahl's writing, both in the early, macabre short stories for adults, and the children's stories he produced in later life, but that out of all the misery came humour and lightness, both in the life and the work. Sturrock gives a compelling account, and makes good use of Dahl's own voice. It makes you want to revisit the prose of the storyteller himself. You can find our Community Guidelines in full here. Want to discuss real-world problems, be involved in the most engaging discussions and hear from the journalists? Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Independent Premium Comments can be posted by members of our membership scheme, Independent Premium. It allows our most engaged readers to debate the big issues, share their own experiences, discuss real-world solutions, and more. Our journalists will try to respond by joining the threads when they can to create a true meeting of independent Premium. 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Roald Dahl - Wikipedia

He thought they were more trouble than they were worth and tried to talk everyone he knew into having theirs pulled, too. When Dahl became a parent, the bad luck continued. In New York, his 4-month-old son was hit so hard by a taxi that his baby carriage flew 40 feet and slammed into a parked bus, shattering his skull. He survived, barely. Then his year-old wife, the actress Patricia Neal, had an aneurysm and fell into a coma for three weeks. He could, at times, be thoughtful and charming. He gave much of his time and massive literary profits to charity. And he responded to family crises with almost incredible courage and ingenuity—virtues he assigned, not incidentally, to all the heroes of his stories. When his wife emerged from her coma, Dahl coached her through a grueling some said cruel rehabilitation regimen that went on to revolutionize modern stroke treatment. But Dahl was also, much of the time, world-historically unpleasant. As a boy he wrapped his sister in pillows and shot BBs at her. As an adult he picked loud fights at dinner parties just to create a spectacle. He bullied editors, sold out friends, and insulted his children. He was a control freak of delight. And Sturrock is probably quite right to mind his Ps and Qs, for he only snagged this plum job because Dahl took away the mandate from someone else shortly before his death. His biography was to have been written by his clever young American publisher Stephen Roxburgh, but — the old story — Dahl fell out with him over the editing of Matilda and decided that some punishment was in order. The great man may no longer be with us, but there is something about his slightly malign spirit that means you would not want to cross him even 20 years after his death. Sturrock's task is made more complicated by the fact that this is not the first scholarly biography to appear. In Jeremy Treglown published an excellent unauthorised account of Dahl's life that drew on the massive correspondence lodged in his many publishers' and agents' archives around the world. Treglown also, crucially, had access to a garrulous Neal who, while nominally reconciled with Dahl and Crosland, had no particular reason to be nice about them. This first important account of Dahl's life, then, tended at times towards what might politely be called the sceptical, especially when it came to Dahl's persistent mythmaking about his wartime flying experiences and his first marriage. Certainly by choosing Sturrock as their chronicler the Dahls have appointed someone whose fandom they can count on — as a young BBC producer in the s Sturrock worked on a documentary about Dahl and managed to remain friends with him — and who can be guaranteed to tell the story of his difficult personality as gently as possible. The result is by no means a whitewash, but it is an attempt to nudge the picture in favour of a man who, despite so many reasons to dislike him, remains one of the greatest forces for good in children's literature of the past 50 years. Roald Dahl. Kathryn Hughes on a careful new biography of the man who transformed children's literature. Roald Dahl writing at home. Kathryn Hughes. Rugby union. US sports. Miguel Delaney. Streaming Hub. Geoffrey Macnab. Clarisse Loughrey. Ed Cumming. Royal Family. Tech news. Tech culture. The Competition. Money transfers. Health insurance. Money Deals. Voucher Codes. John Lewis. JD Sports. Subscription offers. Independent Premium app. Daily Edition app. Chris Blackhurst. Hamish McRae. Climate Blogs. UK Edition. US Edition. Log in using your social network account. Please enter a valid password. Keep me logged in. Want an ad-free experience? Subscribe to Independent Premium. View offers. Getty Images. 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