Roald Dahl (Magill Book Reviews)

Roald Dahl is one of the most successful children’s authors of all time. Many of his works, including JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH (1961), CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (1964), and THE BFG (1982), are considered classic works of juvenile fiction, known and loved by children not only in his native Great Britain and the United States but also throughout the world. Dahl, who established a reputation as a short story writer in the 1940’s, stumbled into this remarkable career almost by accident. He did not begin the work that was to make him a household name until more than twenty years after his initial literary success.

Dahl’s life reads more like fiction than biography, replete with adventure, romance, and tragedy. He lost both his sister and father to illness by the age of four, was a certified war hero with the RAF by the age of twenty-five, served at the British Embassy in wartime Washington, D.C., was involved with the British Intelligence Agency, and became a published author at twenty-six. His thirty-year marriage to famous actress Patricia Neal was fraught with tragedy: Their only son suffered severe brain damage in an accident as a baby, their oldest daughter died of the measles at age seven, and Neal suffered a severe stroke and arduous recovery period.

ROALD DAHL is the first biography of the renowned author to penetrate the considerable mythos that he created for himself. Treglown looks beyond the charming but cantankerous country squire image to reveal a boastful, acquisitive, immature bully and presents an intriguing study of the life and art of a very complex, contradictory, and important figure in literature.

Sources for Further Study

London Review of Books. XVI, April 28, 1994, p. 20.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. April 17, 1994, p. 3.

The New Republic. CCX, May 16, 1994, p. 46.

The New York Review of Books. XLI, June 9, 1994, p. 39.

The New York Times Book Review. XCIX, May 1, 1994, p. 1.

The Times Literary Supplement. March 25, 1994, p. 13.

The Washington Post Book World. XXIV, April 10, 1994, p. 1.