Roald Dahl was one of the world’s greatest storytellers, crafting tales that were exotic in scenario, frequently invested with a moral, and filled with vibrant characters that endure in the imagination.
In this new biography, Matthew Dennison re-evaluates the received narrative surrounding Dahl – that of school sporting hero, daredevil pilot and wartime spy-turned-author – and examines surviving primary resources as well as Dahl’s extensive literary output to tell the story of a man who identified as a rule-breaker, an iconoclast and a romantic, both insider and outsider, hero and child’s friend
Hands off the Handlebars
Throughout his work – James and the Giant Peach (1961), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), Fantastic Mr Fox (1970), Danny, The Champion of the World (1975), The Twits (1980), The BFG (1982)...
Read moreGoing Solo | The Battle of Athens – the Twentieth of April
A life is made up of a great number of small incidents and a small number of great ones: an autobiography must therefore, unless it is to become tedious, be extremely selective, discarding all the...
Read moreA Master of Invention
We lived in Dahl’s world, my brother and I more literally than most children since we grew up a couple of miles from Gypsy House, his home in Great Missenden. As we drove past it my parents would...
Read moreBrush with the Law
Encountering Roald Dahl in covetable, tactile Puffin paperbacks as a child in the 1970s, I suspect I was too wrapped up in the tales themselves to give their actual titles much consideration. Curious...
Read more
