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CURRICULUM & LEARNING ENVIRONMENT * 2 HOURS * LEVEL 2

Fantastic Mr. Dahl

Who was Roald Dahl?

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Roald Dahl was born in Llandaff, South Wales on September 13, 1916. His mother and father were Norwegian, and Roald spent summers in Oslo visiting his grandparents. 
Sadly he lost his father at age 4. Dahl began his schooling at Llandaff Cathedral School, but after playing practical jokes his mother decided to enroll him at St. Peter's, a British boarding school and then later Repton, a private school known for academic excellence. 
However, Dahl described his school years as "days of horrors" filled with "rules, rules and still more rules that had to be obeyed." These experiences undoubtedly influenced his writing. His mother offered to pay his tuition to attend Oxford or Cambridge University. His reply was, "No, thank you. I want to go straight from school to work for a company that will send me to wonderful faraway places like Africa or China." ​
Dahl graduated from Repton in 1932 and went on to work for the Shell Oil Company in Tanzania, Africa. Wanting more adventure, he joined the Royal Air Force and served as a fighter pilot in WWII. After crash landing in Egypt, Dahl was left with severe injuries. 
After several surgeries, he was transferred to Washington D.C. where he served as an assistant air attaché. It was there that he began writing stories and articles for magazines, including The New Yorker. He wrote first children’s story for Walt Disney called The Gremlins in 1942, which was a flop. After this he went back to writing adult stories. It was when he became a father that his career as a children’s writer would continue. The bedtime stories he would tell his own children became the inspiration for some of his most famous books.  ​