Photograph of British writer Roald Dahl.

Roald Dahl

(1916 - 1990)

In 1939, while in his early twenties, Roald Dahl left his Shell Oil job in Tanzania and traveled to Kenya to enlist in the Royal Air Force. He sustained serious injuries when he crash-landed his biplane in the Libyan desert, an experience that he later fictionalized in his first published story, in the Saturday Evening Post. He published two story collections, Someone Like You and Kiss, Kiss, before turning his attention to children’s books. James and the Giant Peach was published in 1961 and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 1964.

All Writing

I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours, a fixed salary, and very little original thinking to do.

—Roald Dahl, 1984

Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

—Roald Dahl, 1990

Voices In Time

1980 | Buckinghamshire

Staging a Symphony

Roald Dahl describes drunken delusions of grandeur.More

Issues Contributed