Happy Birthday Roald Dahl
Visiting Professor Gerri Kimber tells us the bits we may not know about the amazing author…
Many people will remember the celebrations last year to commemorate the centenary of Roald Dahl’s birth. He was born on 13 September 1916 and died on 23 November 1990, aged 74. His reputation as one of the most loved and respected authors of the twentieth century remains undiminished with time. Sales of his children’s books (250 million and rising) are only eclipsed in the UK by Enid Blyton and J. K. Rowling, who named Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as one of her top ten books that all children should read. Posthumous accolades continue to be awarded to him, and not just in the category of children’s literature: earlier this year, in a UK-wide poll to name the greatest authors, songwriters, artists and photographers, Dahl was voted the greatest storyteller of all time, ahead of Shakespeare, Dickens and even J. K. Rowling herself.
Dahl is an author who never talks down to his audience. Children relish the originality of his language, the darkness of some of his plots, and the subversive nature of his child protagonists, who always triumph over cruel, wicked adults. Quentin Blake, the illustrator of several of his books, tried to explain Dahl’s enduring popularity, stating that he was ‘a grown-up being mischievous. He addresses you, a child, as somebody who knows about the world. He was a grown-up — and he was bigger than most — who is on your side. That must have something to do with it.’ Last year, to mark the centenary of Dahl’s birth, The Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary was published, which lists many of his invented words and their meanings, some of which have entered common usage, such as ‘scrumdiddlyumptious’, meaning ‘food that is utterly delicious’.
A museum dedicated to his life and work, situated in Great Missenden, Bucks, where Dahl lived and worked for 36 years, features three interactive galleries, one of which houses his original writing hut (which Dahl based on Dylan Thomas’s own famous writing hut in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire). Here visitors can learn about Dahl the spy, Dahl the ace fighter pilot, Dahl the chocolate historian and Dahl the medical inventor, for his life was truly as extraordinary as his books.
