Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short-story writer, and screenwriter whose 50-year writing career produced multiple foundational 20th-century English children's-fiction works — particularly James and the Giant Peach (1961), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), The BFG (1982), and Matilda (1988). He was born Roald Dahl on September 13, 1916, in Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales, into a Norwegian-immigrant family. His father Harald Dahl was a Norwegian shipbroker who had emigrated to Cardiff in 1880, and his mother Sofie Magdalene Hesselberg was a Norwegian-born homemaker. His Norwegian first name comes from the explorer Roald Amundsen.

His Royal Air Force service across 1939–1946 — including his 1940 Hawker Hurricane plane crash in the Libyan desert (which fractured his skull and produced lifelong back pain) and his subsequent service as an air attaché in Washington, D.C., across 1942–1946 — shaped his early writing career. His Washington years produced his first published short story "A Piece of Cake" in the Saturday Evening Post in 1942.

His 1953 first short-story collection Someone Like You won the 1954 Edgar Award for Best Mystery Short Story Collection. His 1961 first children's novel James and the Giant Peach launched his career in children's fiction. His 1964 second children's novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory sold over 20 million copies worldwide and produced the 1971 Mel Stuart film adaptation Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (with screenplay by Dahl himself, departing from his novel) and the 2005 Tim Burton film adaptation.

His subsequent children's-fiction output included Fantastic Mr Fox (1970), Danny, the Champion of the World (1975), The Twits (1980), The BFG (1982), The Witches (1983, which won the 1983 Whitbread Award), and Matilda (1988). His parallel adult-fiction output — particularly his short-story collections Kiss Kiss (1960) and Switch Bitch (1974) — produced his reputation for darkly twisted endings. His later biographical legacy has been complicated by his documented antisemitism, particularly his 1983 New Statesman essay. He died on November 23, 1990, at age 74, in Oxford, England, of a rare blood disorder.

His name Roald derives from the Old Norse Hróðvaldr meaning "famous ruler." Roald has been a rare but enduring boys' name across Norwegian and Scandinavian-tradition American naming.