Roald Dahl Biography

Fast Facts

• Won an Edgar Allan Poe Award from Mystery Writers of America for his short story collection "Someone Like You" in 1954
• Enlisted in the Royal Air Force during World War II at the age of 23 and later fought in The Battle of Athens
• Helped to invent the Wade-Dahl-Till valve, used to drain excess fluid from the brain, in response to an accident that caused his son Theo to develop hydrocephalus
• Won the Federation of Children's Book Groups Award for "The BFG" in 1982, which he later stated his one of his own favorite stories
• After being posted to Washington, D․C․ as an assistant air attaché at the British Embassy, he published his first piece of writing, "Shot Down Over Libya," in August 1942
• Began working for the Shell Oil in 1934 and was later sent to the company's branch in Dar-es-Salaam in what is now Tanzania in 1938
• His first short story collection, "Over to You," was published in 1946, with his first novel, "Some Time Never: A Fable for Supermen," following in 1948
• Hosted a TV series for CBS called "'Way Out" in 1961 that featured adaptations of horror and sci-fi stories, and later hosted a similar series in Britain called "Tales of the Unexpected" in the 1980s
• Wrote the screenplays for "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and the 1967 James Bond film "You Only Live Twice․"
• Best known as a novelist who wrote the children's books "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "James and the Giant Peach," and "Matilda․"
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was partially inspired by his time at Repton boarding school, where students were given chocolate bars to taste test by a famous company