For his children, of course, Roald would always be a consummate father—flawed perhaps, like all parents, but always loyal and loving. He could never be replaced. His sisters, nephews and nieces, too, lost a powerful force that had bound the wider family together. Roald had been “like a guru,” as Nicky Logsdail described him, for over forty years, and with his departure the ties binding them together began to come loose. No one could replace his irrepressible, sometimes “monstrous” energy,39 and the family gradually dispersed. His closest colleagues felt they had lost a man of genius. Twenty years after his death, both Murray Pollinger and his wife still describe him in these terms, mourning the loss of a fire that had seemed “unquenchable,”40 while for Tom Maschler he was a storyteller who ranked “second to none. … A one-off with a seam of genius.”41 To other adults who knew him less well he was a showman, a loyal friend, a generous host, a benevolent employer, an affable companion at the snooker table, a name-dropper, a poseur, an unreliable witness, or simply someone of whom one needed to be wary.
Notwithstanding his macabre reputation, almost no one who spent any time with Roald Dahl ever found him sinister. Quentin Blake was typical. “I don’t think I ever thought he was dark, actually,” he told me; “difficult perhaps … but I think you got the sense that in broad principle he wanted his own way, if you see what I mean.”42 Sometimes he could veer off the tracks, but at other times his perceptions were sharp and almost always decisive. His decision to give Liccy control of his estate and not have it run by a committee would certainly prove to be a shrewd one. With Amanda Conquy—who left her job in publishing six months after Roald died—to help her run it, she has managed his legacy with love, professionalism and ambition. She has presided over the development of a wide range of film, theater, opera, musical and concert adaptations of his work. She has opened a museum and story center named after him, and started a medical charity in his memory devoted to helping young people suffering from brain and blood disorders. Carefully, like a proud and skillful gardener, she has watched Dahl’s literary reputation grow enormously over the last twenty years. Despite occasional flashes of resentment, her stepchildren are now among the first to acknowledge this.
I always thought there was something of Charles Darwin in Roald. Both men were fascinated by the natural world, both loved observing small behavioral details in humans and animals. Both constructed stories out of what they had seen, and both articulated their hypotheses with imaginative fearlessness. Roald of course was more fantasist than scientist. But that desire to search for ultimate knowledge fascinated him deeply. He longed to reach beyond the mundane and the humdrum into richer and more fertile alternative universes. Doing so in his fiction might open the door to either pleasure or pain, but whatever he was doing in real life, a part of his mind was always somewhere else. Liccy described his restlessness at night, when he seldom slept more than three or four hours. Roald too explained how difficult he sometimes found it to sleep when his mind was somewhere else. “Your mind is whirring and when you lie down in bed and put the light out, your mind is working on [a book] all the time,” he told Todd McCormack. “It’s a devastating process actually, because you can’t get rid of it until you’ve finished it. You really can’t get rid of it.”43 Ophelia was also acutely aware of this detachment. “Even when he sat reading to himself, his middle finger tapped to some secret rhythm,” she recalled.44 He was like Klausner, the amateur inventor, in his early short story The Sound Machine, for whom the tangible world immediately around him was only the humblest of starting points for what might eventually be perceived—if only one could find a way to do so.
“I believe,” he said, speaking more slowly now, “that there is a whole world of sound about us all the time that we cannot hear. It is possible that up there in those high-pitched inaudible regions there is exciting music being made, with subtle harmonies and fierce grinding discords, a music so powerful that it would drive us mad if only our ears were tuned to hear the sound of it.” 45
Stephen Roxburgh was probably right when he said that above all else Roald Dahl was a “family man.” But he also valued himself very highly as a writer. Graham Greene, whose skill Dahl admired hugely, and whom he had visited in Antibes with Ophelia in 1988, once said that he viewed his own books as his children. For Roald, too, this was the case. Each of them was a distillation of inspiration and craftsmanship, and each occupied a special place in his heart. They had been seeded not in the “normal life” but in that other world, the imagination, where “one’s mind changes” and the writer ceases to be a “normal man.”46 He had nourished them all in the privacy of his writing hut and he took pleasure in the skill and beauty of their construction. He had defended many of them against criticism and rejection. He loved them.
To the outside world, Dahl might make light of his talent and argue that in general writers took themselves too seriously, maintaining that he was “simply an entertainer” whose job was “to entertain his public.” Privately, however, he saw himself as much more than this. He found the process of finishing a book immensely painful and would wander around afterwards “like a mother who has lost her children.”47 Ophelia told me he could be “unhinged” by the experience.48 As a storyteller, the fantastic would always triumph over the literal, lest he succumb to his “constant unholy terror of boring the reader.”49 Objectivity or truth was never his aim. “I think the best way of entertaining children is writing fantasy,” he argued. “I would never want to write anything that wasn’t completely made up or invented.”50 Adults sometimes had problems with this attitude. Children never did. That was why he was so surefooted with them.
By the end of his life, Roald Dahl had connected with a vast number of children. His daily postbag was filled with hundreds of fan letters and he could proudly boast that children all over the world would invite him into their houses for a cup of tea. To deal with the rejection that he still felt from many adult critics, he had taken to praising child readers over adult ones. It was a petulant defense perhaps, but understandable in light of the generally dismissive attitude that still prevailed toward him in the publishing world, and that was evident in many of the obituaries that followed his death in 1990. But it was genuine, too.
He would have been amazed and proud at how things have changed in twenty years, at the respectability now afforded to children’s literature and the praise heaped upon his work by current exponents of the genre, from J. K. Rowling and Philip Pullman to Anthony Horowitz and Michael Rosen. In a world awash with literary prizes, it is hard to imagine that Dahl won only one major award in his lifetime for his children’s fiction. This change of his own status and that of the genre he championed would doubtless have given him enormous pleasure, for he craved fame and recognition, but at his heart he knew it was an empty need. Knowing that, through storytelling, he had touched the interior worlds of millions of children was infinitely more rewarding. He described the sensation it gave him just before he died: “Sometimes it gives me a funny feeling that my writing arm is about six thousand miles long and that the hand that holds the pencil is reaching all the way across the world to faraway houses and classrooms where children live and go to school. That’s a thrill all right.”51 I doubt he could wish for a finer epitaph.
Acknowledgments
I AM HUGELY GRATEFUL to so many people who helped me with this book. To begin with I must thank Roald Dahl’s Estate and in particular Ophelia Dahl who invited me to write it and who ensured me free access to her father’s remarkable archive. Roald’s other children—Tessa, Theo, and Lucy—have also given generously of their time and allowed me access to many of their own private papers. Patricia Neal and Liccy Dahl too have been unstinting with their cooperation.
The wider Dahl family have also been enormously accommodating. I was fortunate to interview Roald’s three sisters, Alfhild Hansen, Else Logsdail and Asta Anderson, before their deaths. Subsequently many of their children also spared their valuable time to talk to me, seeking out lette
rs and photographs in old drawers, trunks and attics and loaning them to me, often for several weeks at a time. In particular I would like to mention Astri Newman, Anna Corrie, Lou Pearl and her husband Dennis, Nicholas Logsdail and Alexandra Anderson. Louis Dahl’s children, Bryony and Ashley Dahl, were also immensely obliging, as was Oscar Dahl’s great-grandson, Roald, whom I tracked down in France. After driving him down to Gipsy House one evening for dinner, I was subsequently able to claim that I had introduced Liccy to Roald Dahl.
Witnesses who offered invaluable interviews and information on aspects of Dahl’s family background and childhood included: John Cleese, Johan Petter Hesselberg, Reidun Jebsen, Peter Persen, Herbert E. Roese, Eleanor “Tull” Strømsland, Marianne Strømsland, Olivier Beaurin-Gressier, Nicholas Arnold, Nancy Deuchar, Rachel Drayson, Margaret Edwards, Tim Fisher, Douglas Highton, Sir Charles Pringle and Ben Reuss. On Roald’s time as a fighter pilot I am grateful for the help of Barbara Dods, Deb Ford, John Lowe, Lesley O’Malley (formerly Pares) and Robert Stitt; and on his years in Grendon Underwood to Pat Brazier, Pauline Hearne and Jeremy Lang. On his wartime exploits in Washington I am grateful for the assistance of Jennet Conant, Jonathan Cuneo, Antoinette Haskell, Robert Hegeman, Norm Killian and Bill Macdonald. Most of all, I owe special gratitude to Robert Haskell, the current guardian of all the letters Roald wrote to his grandfather, Charles Marsh. Robert was also a most generous host, allowing me to study the huge trove of letters while staying on his farm in Virginia and driving me to see his grandfather’s homes, both at Longlea and in Rappahannock County.
Others who helped me with information on Dahl’s later life include: Linda Ambrose, Miran Aprahamian, Sonia Austrian, Liz Attenborough, Veronica and Marius Barran, Bob and Helen Bernstein, Quentin Blake, Amanda Conquy, Sarah Conquy, Charlotte Crosland, Neisha Crosland, Sophie Dahl, Michael de las Casas, Sue Elder, Paul Farmer, Christopher Figg, Sir Leonard Figg, Ed and Marian Goodman, Martin Goodwin, Bob Gottlieb, Alan Higgin, Callie Hope-Morley, Alice Kadel (formerly Keene), Luke Kelly, Wendy Kress, Lemina Lawson Johnson, Sheila Lewis Crosby (formerly St. Lawrence), Pam Lowndes, Joanna Lumley, Tom Maschler, Rosie Mennem, Jane Pepper, Gina and Murray Pollinger, Stephen Roxburgh, Wally Saunders, Tom Solomon, Roger Straus, Jenny Taylor, Maria Tucci, Rayner Unwin, Sue Vivian (formerly Denson), Sir David and Lady Weatherall and John Wilkinson.
I would like to thank Amanda Conquy for reading the manuscript so diligently and for her thoughtful criticism, and I am greatly indebted to Cherie Burns for generously sharing information gleaned during her researches for her forthcoming biography of Millicent Rogers, to be published by St. Martin’s Press in 2011.
The book could not have been written without the assistance of a number of key institutions and archives: Heather Mountjoy, the Archivist of the Glamorgan County Records Office; Averil Goldsworthy, the Chairman of the Welsh Norwegian Society; Paul Stevens, the archivist of Repton School; John Golding, the housemaster of The Priory; various archivists at Shell; Justin Warwick and Emily Cox at the British Schools Exploring Society; Miss Hammond-Smith at the RAF Museum; Rob Brown, who runs the 112 Squadron website; Anthony Richards at the Imperial War Museum in London, who gave me access to the private papers of G. J. Thwaites and W. G. Rockall of 80 Squadron; Dave Gale, who kindly proofread the chapter relating to the Battle of Athens; Adam Dixon at the Howard Gotlieb Archive at Boston University; Henry Hardy at Wolfson College; Patrice S. Fox at the Harry Ransom Center for the Humanities at the University of Austin, Texas; Jeremy Johnson at the Guildhall; Trish Hayes at the BBC Written Archives Centre; Jacque Roethler of the Special Collections Library at the University of Iowa in Iowa City; and last, but by no means least, Tara C. Craig at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Columbia University.
Barney Samson and Diane Sullivan both helped me initially to gather and organize my material. Diane had worked with me at the BBC in 1985 when I made my first television film about Roald, and gave up hours of her own time freely to transcribe his wartime letters. More recently, Jake Wilson has been the most tireless and perceptive of ferrets, chasing out information from the most inaccessible places, and always keeping me on my toes. I am lucky to have had the benefit of his sharp and subtle sensibility. Liz Whittingham, the first archivist at the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre, also helped get me started on the book, but I could not have completed it without the kindness, industry, clearheadedness and generosity of her successor, Jane Branfield. To her, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude.
On the production side of the book my thanks are due to a host of people—principally Caroline Dawnay, but also Olivia Hunt and St. John Donald at United Agents in London, Zoë Pagnamenta in New York and Michael Siegel in Los Angeles. Sarah Hochman, my editor at Simon & Schuster in New York, and her assistant Michele Bové dealt patiently with my many questions and quibbles. I am immensely grateful to them as I am to Arabella Pike, Robert Lacey, Richard Johnson and John Bond at HarperPress in London, David Rosenthal also at Simon & Schuster, and Dinah Forbes at McClelland and Stewart in Toronto. I was lucky enough to benefit from all their advice and experience. Alan Samson too was kind enough to read the book at an early stage and offer me his thoughts.
I am grateful to Deborah Rodgers for steering me toward the mercurial Bob Gottlieb and to Drs. Shawn and Jo Libaw for their hospitality in New York and Los Angeles, as well as for offering unofficial medical advice when I requested it. It goes without saying that any errors in that department are all my own.
Finally, I would like to doff my cap too to my great friends Peter Ash and Stephen Walker. They were the first people to read the manuscript and their enthusiasm, encouragement and advice helped keep me going when the end seemed to be receding ever further into the distance. My thanks are also due to John Manger for suggesting that I write the book with a single reader in mind and to the sparky Thorvald Blough for being that person—at least in my imagination. I have yet to hear his verdict on the book.
Most of all my thanks are due once more to Liccy and Ophelia Dahl, who trusted a neophyte with writing Roald’s biography. From the beginning they urged me, above all else, to “make him come alive.” I have tried to do this at all times, but whether I have vindicated their decision only time will tell.
Notes
A Note on quotations from Dahl’s manuscripts and letters
Roald Dahl was not the greatest of spellers. I have generally corrected errors in his spelling unless their inaccuracy is either particularly funny or telling.
Abbreviations used in the Notes
CMP—Charles Marsh Papers (in possession of Robert Haskell)
FSG—Farrar, Straus Giroux Archives, New York
GHPP—Gipsy House Private Papers
HGC—Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University
HRCH—Harry Ransom Center for the Humanities, The University of Texas at Austin
LDC—Lucy Dahl Collection
PNC—Patricia Neal Collection
RDMSC—Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre
WLC—Watkins Loomis Collection at Columbia University
PROLOGUE : Lunch with Igor Stravinsky
1. Roald Dahl, interviewed in A Dose of Dahl’s Magic Medicine, 09/28/96.
CHAPTER ONE: The Outsider
1. Memoirs of Gunder Paulsen (1821–1872), MS at University of Oslo, translated by Anne Livgaard Lindland.
2. Dr. Johan Petter Hesselberg, Letter to the author, 01/07/08.
3. Dr. Johan Petter Hesselberg, Letter to the author, 01/07/08.
4. I am most grateful to Dr. Johan Petter Hesselberg, who supplied me with many of the Hesselberg family details. He also recalls visiting Roald Dahl one day in the late 1980s, after the publication of Boy, and telling him these stories over the dinner table at Gipsy House.
5. Ophelia Dahl, Conversation with the author, Boston, 11/01/07.
6. These were perhaps most notably articulated in Eleanor Cameron’s attack on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in her article “McLuhan, Youth and Literature,”
The Horn Book Magazine (October 1972).
7. Bookmark, BBC Television, 1985.
8. Roald Dahl, Boy (London: Jonathan Cape, 1984), p. 9.
9. Ibid., p. 51.
10. Ibid.
11. Louise (Lou) Pearl, Conversation with the author, 05/09/08.
12. Douglas Highton, Conversation with the author, 11/08/07.
13. Alfhild Hansen, Interviewed in A Dose of Dahl’s Magic Medicine, 09/28/86.
14. Christiania, Probate Court, Record Protocol no. 15, Series D, 8/7-1922-4/12-1923, p. 113.
15. Boy, p. 13.
16. Sarpsborg Church Register, MINI 1, 1859–1869.
17. Felicity Dahl, Conversation with the author, 11/19/06.
18. Boy, p. 15.
19. Sarpsborg Church Register, MINI 1, 1859–1869, and Kristiania Census, 1900.
20. Stephen Roxburgh, Conversation with the author, 03/14/09.
21. Alexandra Anderson, Conversation with the author, 11/14/07.
22. Boy, p. 15.
23. Ibid.
24. Alfhild Hansen, Conversation with the author, 08/07/92.
25. Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts (1881).
26. Kingsley Amis, Memoirs (London: Hutchinson, 1991), pp. 305–7.
27. Roald Dahl (Oscar’s great-grandson), Conversation with the author, 02/08.
28. Boy, p. 15.
29. Ibid.
30. Roald Dahl, Hairy Faces (?1986)—RDMSC RD 6/2/1/125.
CHAPTER TWO : Shutting Out the Sun
1. B. G. Charles, Old Norse Relations with Wales (Cardiff, 1934).
2. Herbert Roese, “Cardiff’s Norwegian Links,” Welsh History Review, vol. 8, no. 2 (December 1996).
3. Hjalmar Karlsen, quoted in A Little Bit of Norway in Wales, Recollections of Norwegian Seamen’s Churches, Norwegian Church Cultural Centre, Cardiff, 2006.
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