Guest Author - Jacqueline Suffolk
Roald Dahl was born in Llandaff in Wales to Norwegian parents, his father Harald and his older sister Astri died when he was three. His mother, Sophie, was left to bring up two stepchildren and her own four children, Roald being the only boy.
He based the character of the grandmother in the children’s story ‘The Witches’ on his mother, as a testament to her. His mother used to tell the children tales of Trolls and other mythical Norwegian creatures.
Roald kept a diary from the age of eight, but he had to keep it secret from his five sisters. He’d hide it in a waterproof tin box, tied to a branch at the top of a conker tree, which grew in the garden. His sisters couldn’t climb the tree and when he wanted to write, he’d climb the tree, sit in the branches and retrieve his diary.
Roald Dahl’s first book ‘The Gremlins’ written in 1943 and adapted from a script written for Walt Disney. He didn’t like the book, but Eleanor Roosevelt did and often invited him to the White House and FDR’s week-end retreat ‘Hyde Park’.
His career as a children’s writer didn’t take off until the 1960’s, when he’d children of his own. He also wrote short stories for adults. He wasn’t a quick writer and often took a month just on the first page, to get the plot right. His stories were initially published in magazines, such as Harpers, the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly before being published in book form.
He wrote, the now famous, Tales of the Unexpected, a series of sixteen short stories, they were first published together in 1979 and were developed into the hugely successful, cult T.V. series of the same name, which featured many of the big stars of the time Joan Collins and Sir John Gielguid. All of these stories were different, but they shared one thing in common, an unexpected ending.
Perhaps his most famous short story and part of this series ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ was written in 1953 and contains 3899 words. A tale of a comfortable middle class respectability, Mary the wife knows what her husband likes, but this evening he gives her some bad news. She is so shocked, goes to make dinner but instead kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb. She destroys the evidence by roasting the joint and feeding it to the investigating police.
Roald said “I thought it was hilarious, what’s horrible is basically funny, in fiction.”
He won the Edgar Award for the Mystery Writers of America, three times.m
