Roald Dahl [ a ] 13 September β 23 November was a British author of popular children's literature and short stories, a poet, screenwriter and a wartime fighter ace. Dahl was born in Wales to affluent Norwegian immigrant parents, and lived for most of his life in England. He became a fighter pilot and, subsequently, an intelligence officer, rising to the rank of acting wing commander.
He rose to prominence as a writer in the s with works for children and for adults, and he became one of the world's best-selling authors. Dahl's short stories are known for their unexpected endings, and his children's books for their unsentimental, macabre , often darkly comic mood, featuring villainous adult enemies of the child characters.
They had two children together Ellen Marguerite and Louis before her death in Dahl was named after Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen. Dahl's sister Astri died from appendicitis at age seven in when Dahl was three years old, and his father died of pneumonia at age 57 several weeks later.
Dahl first attended The Cathedral School, Llandaff. At age eight, he and four of his friends were caned by the headmaster after putting a dead mouse in a jar of gobstoppers at the local sweet shop , [ 5 ] which was owned by a "mean and loathsome" old woman named Mrs Pratchett.
Dahl transferred to St Peter's boarding school in Weston-super-Mare. His parents had wanted him to be educated at an English public school , and this proved to be the nearest because of the regular ferry link across the Bristol Channel. Dahl's time at St Peter's was unpleasant; he was very homesick and wrote to his mother every week but never revealed his unhappiness to her. After her death in , he learned that she had saved every one of his letters; [ 34 ] they were broadcast in abridged form as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week in to mark the centenary of his birth.
