Not just a storyteller

Press, 13 January 1987, Page 18

Not just a storyteller

You might best recognise him as the author of “Revolting Rhymes” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” but there are many other sides to the personality of Roald Dahl.

Dahl not only writes books for children, he writes books for adults as well. He has also written scripts for films. “You Only Live Twice,” a James Bond film, was penned by Dahl. His five children helped him make his fortune writing stories for the young. They loved the made-up stories he told them at bed-time so Roald Dahl wrote them down.

“James and the Giant Peach” was the first to be written this way; then came “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” published first in 1964. It was "Charlie” which made Dahl a star of children’s storytellers.

Some of his adult short stories were included in the television series, “Tales of the Unexpected,” shown on networks throughout the world.

Children write to him from all over the globe. They send him stories, letters, poems, and pictures, and as often as he can, he replies. Dahl does his writing in a run-down hut at the bottom of his garden — his “inventing room” — at

his home, Gipsy House, Great Missenden, in England.

He spends a set amount of hours every day in his hut. Stamina, Dahl says, is ope of the several ingredients, which a writer must have. Roald Dahl was once a spy. He was shot down and crippled in an air battle (his hips were removed and replaced with steel ones ... he uses one of the original bones as a paperweight’).

Dahl married a movie star, Patricia Neal. One of their children died from a complication after contracting measles. Dahl invented a special valve for people who have suffered brain damage, and created a new technique used to help people who have suffered strokes.

He based that technique on his work with his wife after she suffered from an aneurism during pregnancy with their, fifth baby. Unable to walk or talk properly as a result, Patricia Neal was fully recovered just a year later, thanks to her husband’s help. The couple’s story was told in a well-known film.

Roald Dahl holds many other interests — in antiques, art, wines, and or-chid-growing. No ordinary man, this writer of extraordinary stories.