Roald Dahl’s family tree
In 1946, a few months after the war had ended, Roald returned home to England and, for the next four years, lived with his mother in her house in Buckinghamshire. He began to write short stories for adults and sent them to his agent in America, where they were published. Roald went back to live in New York in 1951 and a year later met a famous actress called Patricia Neal. They fell in love, and in 1953 got married and returned to England to live in Gispy House near to Roald’s mother in Great Missenden. But they didn’t live there all the time. Instead, the couple travelled to and fro between Britain and the USA so that Pat could act in films, TV programmes and plays. At the same time, they brought up their children, who came along in the following order: Olivia (1955), Tessa (1957), Theo (1960), Ophelia (1964) and Lucy (1965). The childcare was shared between Pat, Roald and a nanny. Sometimes, Pat worked in the USA while Roald stayed in England, at home with the children. Sometimes, they all went to the USA together. Life was very glamorous and exciting.
Meanwhile, Roald was still writing stories for adults. They were full of strange and mysterious goings-on, and characters with nasty or odd ways of thinking and behaving. He loved that kind of fiction, and so did the many Roald Dahl fans who gobbled it up. So, if he was doing well with this type of story, why did he begin writing for children instead? I think that spending so much time around his own children as they grew up might be one of the reasons why Roald became a children’s writer.
In his notebook Roald began to jot down ideas and plots for children’s stories. On one occasion he stood looking at the fruit in his garden. Why, he wondered, did the apples and pears in his garden stop growing? Why didn’t they just go on and on and on growing? And what if, instead of apples or pears, it was a peach? This was how James and the Giant Peach started out and in 1961 it became the first of his books for children to be published.
It would be wonderful to imagine that Roald Dahl’s life went on in a magical storybook way, but three tragic events then took place that would have a huge effect on him.
When Theo was four months old, his pram was hit by a taxi in New York City. He suffered terrible head injuries and had to be nursed carefully for years. But, despite many complications, he survived. Roald became very involved with his son’s treatment. He worked with a brilliant toymaker and a surgeon to invent a tiny device that would drain the fluid that sometimes builds up after such accidents out of a patient’s brain. This became known as the Dahl–Wade–Till valve. Although it was never used on Theo, the valve was used to treat nearly three thousand children all over the world. Somehow, and without any proper training in science or technology, Roald Dahl had become a great inventor.
Roald continued to look after the children when Pat was away filming, as well as working on his next story for children, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But then in 1962 a second tragedy occurred. Olivia died from complications from measles – she was just seven years old. This was exactly the same age that Roald’s sister Astri had been when she died. Perhaps that helped him, perhaps not. It’s certainly something he thought about, as he mentions the coincidence of ages in Boy.
I can see some of this in close focus. I had a son who died and the same thing had happened to my father too. He had a son who died before I was born. I’ve a funny feeling that both Roald and I coped with all the sadness and rage and disbelief in a similar fashion. Roald tried very hard to understand how and why Olivia died. He tried to be scientific about it, writing down in a calm, factual manner the exact sequence of events that led to her death. Afterwards, he was determined to make sure that other children received the measles vaccine.
Eventually, though, the tragedies were too much for Roald and for a long time he was very, very depressed. One way he and Pat found some hope was by helping other children through charity work.
Then the third tragedy hit: Pat became very seriously ill. She suffered a huge stroke. A stroke can mean different things to different people, depending on how severe it is. Some might find that they stop being able to use parts of their body. They might find that they can’t speak or walk properly. Pat’s stroke looked like it might be one of the worst.
But Roald wasn’t going to be beaten. He decided to get Pat better, introducing what looked to some like a military regime – a round of exercises and activity that could never for one day, one hour, one moment stop. Roald was in charge. He gave the orders and it was Pat’s job to obey them. This, Roald said, was the only way she could get better.
It sounds like a strange fairy tale, but amazingly and incredibly she did get better. Patricia Neal even went back to acting. It’s such a fascinating story that a film was made about it!
Meanwhile, there were four children who needed to be looked after. Friends of the children tell stories about how amazing Roald seemed to them. Here was this incredibly tall, gangly man who was full of hobbies and stories. He was always tinkering about with bits of old furniture, listening to music, talking about art or famous people he knew. And he did unbelievably naughty things. In a restaurant, he might ask what the ‘special’ was. Then, when the waiter told him, he would say in a loud voice so that the whole restaurant could hear, ‘Don’t ever get the “special”, it’s probably last night’s leftovers. They only tell you it’s the “special” so that they can get rid of it!’
And there was always the chocolate. From his schooldays at Repton, which wasn’t far from the Cadbury’s factory at Bournville, Roald loved chocolate. So he had a box at the main table in the house that was always packed full of chocolate bars. After every meal, the box was circulated around the table and he would even give a few Smarties to his beloved dog Chopper.
And, talking of chocolate, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was to become his most famous book of all. In America there were plans to turn it into a film. Suddenly everyone was talking about Roald Dahl – but unfortunately not in a good way. Back then, in the 1960s, American Civil Rights activists were trying to make sure black people and white people were treated equally. Many thought that the Oompa- Loompas made black people sound silly, undignified and inferior. Some organizations said that no way should a film version of this book be made. Roald agreed to turn the Oompa-Loompas into white characters, and the film – under the slightly different title of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory – went into production.
I don’t think Roald Dahl invented the Oompa Loompas to cause offence. He was not the type of person who would do things like that. But I do think that perhaps he hadn’t realized how certain words, pictures, images and ways of saying things suggest to children that some people are superior and some inferior.
None of this was to stop Roald Dahl from writing and telling stories. Sometimes, he would wake the children – and any of their friends who were staying for a sleepover – and take them for midnight walks down the lane to the arch under the railway, tell them a scary story or two and then march them back to bed.
Then, instead of going to work, like most of the other dads nearby seemed to do, he either pottered about in the house or walked up the garden to his special hut, to write.
By the end of the 1970s Roald had published five more books for children, which were The Magic Finger, Fantastic Mr Fox, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Danny the Champion of the World and The Enormous Crocodile.
At this point in time, Roald and Pat’s life together was drifting apart and in 1983 they were divorced. Later that year Roald married Felicity, who is usually called Liccy (pronounced ‘Lissy’). Roald’s new wife had three children of her own, so now there were seven children.
In 1977 Roald became a grandfather too. His daughter Tessa had a baby girl: Sophie. She heard the early versions of The BFG and the Sophie in the book is named after her. One of the ways Roald got his granddaughter interested in the idea of a big friendly giant who collects dreams was first to tell her the story and then, at night, to climb up a ladder and appear at her bedroom window, just like the BFG!
Can you imagine lying in bed upstairs, when suddenly you see your granddad looking through the window …?
People who visited the Dahl house at this time spoke of how full of people it always seemed to be. It was rowdy and rude, with lots of jokes and noise and music. It rather looks as if Roald had made another Dahl gang, a bit like the family he grew up in.
By the 1980s Roald was world-famous. Millions of people were reading his books, watching his TV programmes and seeing films that he had been involved with. Many people knew that he was often in pain because of his injuries from the plane crash. And some people knew that inside must be hidden away the many things that made him sad.
I once saw him at a big book festival organized by his publisher Puffin Books. It was wonderful to watch hundreds, probably thousands of children trying to get into a hall to hear him read from his latest book. I sneaked in and realized that everyone was listening. And I remember thinking that there was something both sad and funny about his eyebrows. If you lift up your eyebrows, you can do it in a way that makes people laugh, because you look so surprised. And you can also do it in a way that looks sad, as if life has taken you by surprise in a not-very-nice way … I remember thinking that Roald Dahl’s face and his eyebrows were like this.
Each time a new book came out there was a WHOOP across the world. Children loved them. A few days later, they would be telling each other about the incredible things they’d read – about Bruce Bogtrotter and the enormous chocolate cake from Matilda or maybe the amazing whizzpopping scene in front of … no … surely not … the Queen? Not any old imaginary queen, but the real Queen. No way! Yes! Really? Yes!!
Ask any writer what it’s like when people are reading and enjoying and talking about your book and they will probably reply that it’s one of the best feelings in the world. I certainly think so. And I’m sure Roald Dahl felt the same.
