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Roald Dahl Museum

He's quite a Dahl!
Roald Dahl hailed with birthday celebrations
By Paul Majendie

LONDON (Reuters) - Children, parents, teachers and adult fans are throwing parties on Wednesday to celebrate what would have been the 90th birthday party of the darkly comic writer Roald Dahl.

"He understood children and identified with them. This is like a great big happy birthday party to acknowledge him," said his daughter Lucy, launching what she and others hope will be a day of improvised "Revolting Rhymes" and "Oompa Loompa" dances.

Exhibitions and children's reading campaigns are also being staged to commemorate Dahl, who died in 1990 and has now sold more than 100 million books in 40 languages. Dahl initially made his name as a writer of adult fiction, but cult children's classics such as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "The Witches" have more recently overshadowed his chilling adult work.

Children's writer Anthony Horovitz said the recent renaissance in children's literature had begun with Dahl, rather than J K Rowling, author of the phenomenally successful Harry Potter wizard sagas. "Dahl was perhaps the first author to take the children's side and collude against the smelly, ugly, stupid creatures that inhabit the adult world," he said.

In an echo of Potter's Hogwarts Express, a special train will take visitors from London to Great Missenden, the rural retreat in southern England where Dahl wrote in a hut at the bottom of the garden. The Dahl Museum, which attracted 70,000 visitors in its first year, is staging walking tours around the village to locations used in his books.

Amanda Conquy, director of the Dahl literary estate, hailed Dahl as the first of children's writers to achieve 'pop star' status. "He was very much the children's choice against their parents," she said. Some critics have attacked his books as brutish, scary and scatological, but in an interview 20 years ago with Reuters the author supplied his own fitting epitaph:

"I never get any protests from children. All you get are giggles of mirth and squirms of delight. I know what children like."
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The Marvellous World of Roald Dahl

Fighter pilot, inventor, spy - the life of Roald Dahl is often stranger than fiction. From crashing his plane over Africa to hobnobbing in Hollywood and his remarkable encounters with everyone from Walt Disney to President Roosevelt - this is the story of his greatest adventures and how his real-life escapades find expression in his most famous books, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Matilda.

Through a vast collection of his letters, writings and archive, the story is told largely in his own words with contributions from his last wife Liccy, daughter Lucy and biographer Donald Sturrock. Long-term collaborator and illustrator Quentin Blake also creates exclusive new drawings for the film which are specially animated to bring Dahl's marvellous world to life.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07m8n2q/the-marvellous-world-of-roald-dahl

I never knew Dahl as a children's writer. I experienced him as a writer about flying and other adult interests, but often with a Fortean angle.
 
That was an excellent documentary, anecdotal but what a life he led even from those sketches! When I was a kid I read both Dahl's children's fiction and his adult work, especially those twist in the tale short stories, so it was really interesting to see the seeds of both in the programme. The Quentin Blake illustrations were a lovely bit. Not sure about Dahl being the inspiration for James Bond, though...
 
When my kids were small, 30-odd years ago, Dahl was a household name and his books were in every classroom. My kids loved his books but their teachers were less than enthusiastic; Dahl was 'not a nice man.' Took me a good while to find out what they were on about in those pre-internet days.
 
escargot said:
When my kids were small, 30-odd years ago, Dahl was a household name and his books were in every classroom. My kids loved his books but their teachers were less than enthusiastic; Dahl was 'not a nice man.' Took me a good while to find out what they were on about in those pre-internet days.
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You just have to see him interviewed to know he was a weirdo. I'll say it again: talent doesn't make you a nice guy.
 
GNC said:
You just have to see him interviewed to know he was a weirdo. I'll say it again: talent doesn't make you a nice guy.
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I’ve always found it odd that he was friends with Gary Glitter. He was one of the guests on Dahls “This is your Life“. Difficult to work out what they had in common. Nothing implied of course.
 
Stillill said:
I’ve always found it odd that he was friends with Gary Glitter. He was one of the guests on Dahls “This is your Life“. Difficult to work out what they had in common. Nothing implied of course.
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Long before the Gary Glitter, Savile etc revelations I read that Dahl would hide obscure sexual slang in his children's books.

All I can remember of this is that 'snozzcumber' apparently meant 'penis'.
Back then I couldn't for the life of me see why he'd do that but perhaps there was something we didn't know.
 
escargot said:
Long before the Gary Glitter, Savile etc revelations I read that Dahl would hide obscure sexual slang in his children's books.

All I can remember of this is that 'snozzcumber' apparently meant 'penis'.
Back then I couldn't for the life of me see why he'd do that but perhaps there was something we didn't know.
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Hide? What about Willie Wonka?
 
I recall reading an article about him (the sun or NotW or some objectionable rag my grandfather used to read and I was too young and ignorant to discern against)

Complaints of him at a school talk.

"Don't play with your torch or your batteries will go flat"

...He would be wasted on this prudish age...He was not a nice man and I think that was why his audience loved his work so much.

As for his family apologising for his attitudes...WTF?
 
Peripart said:
And him not being a nice guy doesn't, IMO, mean we should automatically disregard or stop enjoying his work.
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I'm not trying to speak here for people who are perfectly able to decide how to spend their own money.
But a parent probably wouldn't be keen on buying Dahl's books for their kids if they were Jewish and aware that Dahl said 'there is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity. ... Even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason.'
 
Also, Mike Teevee is punished in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because... he likes watching television. Harsh. Don't all kids like watching television?

Anyway, I remember reading a review of Matilda that stuck with me. It said kids love Dahl's books because they're on the kid readers' side, but you should be suspicious of adults who love to read (or watch) his children's fiction, because Dahl seemed to have very little time for adults at all. It's like they're fun when you're a child, but you should really grow out of them.
 
GNC said:
Also, Mike Teevee is punished in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because... he likes watching television. Harsh. Don't all kids like watching television?

Anyway, I remember reading a review of Matilda that stuck with me. It said kids love Dahl's books because they're on the kid readers' side, but you should be suspicious of adults who love to read (or watch) his children's fiction, because Dahl seemed to have very little time for adults at all. It's like they're fun when you're a child, but you should really grow out of them.
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Isn’t Mike Teevee punished for using the matter transporter thing?
 
escargot said:
But a parent probably wouldn't be keen on buying Dahl's books for their kids if they were Jewish and aware that Dahl said 'there is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity. ... Even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason.'
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I can't argue with that at all. I'm thinking more generally, I suppose, based on high-profile news stories regarding, say, Kevin Spacey or Johnny Depp. It's a personal matter in the end, but I feel we should still be allowed to declare Spacey a good actor at the same time as decrying his other behaviour.

Perhaps I'm digressing somewhat (makes a change, eh?), but as I get older, it seems to me that the celeb world - and quite possibly the wider world - can be divided neatly between nasty pieces of work on the one hand, and those who haven't been caught yet on the other!
 
gordonrutter said:
Isn’t Mike Teevee punished for using the matter transporter thing?
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Yes, but Mike is punished by the author, as the other kids are, for having unpleasant traits: Augustus is greedy, Violet chews gum, and Veruca is spoiled.
 
GNC said:
Yes, but Mike is punished by the author, as the other kids are, for having unpleasant traits: Augustus is greedy, Violet chews gum, and Veruca is spoiled.
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An ok, I was taking it more literally as it were.
 
Charlie and the Chocolate factory and the Great Glass Elevator had a serious anti-American bias.

(Though I suspect it was probably more of certain aspects of american society rather than america as a whole...)

People talk about his silly Chinese jokes; they are silly rather than offensive.

The President becomming the president because he isnt fit for anything else is amusing but is possibly heading in a more problematic direction.

The treatment of the oompa-loompas is really problematic but one wonders how the world would treat a race of six inch people who use cacao beans as currency; probably Willy Wonkas benign despotism is the best fate for them. He teaches them english but in no way tries to alter their society at all.

And notice they are the element of free speech in the Factory. I dont think they are without agency.
 
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