Before he started writing children’s books, he was a spy. He ordered chocolates and a circular saw to be thrown into the grave

Roald Dahl was born on September 13, 1916 in Llandaff, today a district of Cardiff. His family emigrated to Wales from Norway. He was named after Roald Amundsen, the famous Norwegian explorer and first conqueror of the South Pole. When he was three years old, his sister Astri died of complications from appendicitis. Shortly afterwards, Roald’s father also died. Although he remembered little of it, these events cast a shadow on his later life and, above all, on his work. Many of the characters in his books and novels were orphans.

Roald Dahl became an RAF pilot after the outbreak of World War II. He sat at the controls after a 7-hour training session

Roald’s father provided financial support for the family, leaving a considerable fortune. So the future writer attended prestigious schools. In 1933, instead of going to college, he decided to get a job at Shell Petroleum and go to Africa. The war found him there. In November 1939, Dahl joined the Royal Air Force, the air force of Great Britain, although he had absolutely no experience with airplanes. After training lasting only 7 hours and 40 minutes, he took the controls. In September 1940, his plane crashed in the desert, and Dahl ended up with a fractured skull, a broken nose and several months of blindness. But he survived. Half a year later, he was released from the hospital and sat at the controls again.

However, the accident had serious health consequences. Eventually, Dahl was forced to give up his career as a pilot, although he regretted it for the rest of his life. After being evacuated from Africa, he went to the British diplomatic mission in the United States, where, interestingly, he arrived on a Polish ship, the Batory, commandeered by the British. This is how his career as a diplomat began and… . In the United States, despite this, social life was flourishing. Dahl worked with Ian Fleming, who would later create the character of superagent James Bond. Dahl will also write the script for “You Only Live Twice”. Like Bond, he seduced and spied on rich American women, wrote propaganda texts, and finally, encouraged by, among others, by the writer C.S. Forester, also the first novels.

From a pilot to a diplomat to a British spy. Roald Dahl preferred “fantasy to reality”

He started with “autobiographies”, although they were more Dahl’s fantasies than real stories. The first one he published for children was “Gremlins”, inspired by the stories of RAF pilots. The book, published in 1943, was followed by others: “Jack and the Giant Peach”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “The Magic Finger”, “Fantastic Mr. Fox”, “Charlie and the Glass Elevator”, “The Big Man” (also known as “The BFG” “), “Witches”, “Matilda”… Dahl’s work has shaped the imagination of many children. He had five of them himself. Olivia, the first daughter, died at the age of seven from encephalitis. Four-month-old son Theo suffered brain swelling after an accident. Dahl, first in despair after the death of his daughter, then fighting for his son’s life, and in the 1960s for his wife’s recovery, made a huge contribution to the development of medicine.

– Why, for God’s sake, should someone wade through a thicket of details or a set of facts when there are so many wonderful stories around? Imagination is always more interesting than reality – says his biographer, Donald Sturrock.

My flaws and quirks are legion. I get bored easily in the company of adults. I drink too much whiskey and wine in the evenings. I eat too much chocolate. I smoke too much. I get angry when my back hurts. I don’t always clean my nails. I no longer tell my children long stories before bed. I play at horse races and I lose a lot of money because of it. I hate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and all those kinds of days and the cards that people buy and send to each other. I hate my birthday. And I’m balding

– he wrote in 1972. Roald Dahl died in 1990 of leukemia. He ordered snooker cues, a bottle of Burgundy wine, chocolates, pencils and… a circular saw to be placed in the grave.