Роальд Даль: Жизнь и творчество писателя

British writer and poet (1916–1990)

Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British author of popular children's literature and short stories, a poet, screenwriter and a wartime fighter ace. His books have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. Dahl has been called "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century". 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. Dahl's father, a wealthy shipbroker and self made man, had emigrated to Britain from Sarpsborg in Norway and settled in Cardiff in the 1880s with his first wife, Frenchwoman Marie Beaurin Gresser. They had two children together (Ellen Marguerite and Louis) before her death in 1907. His first language was Norwegian, which he spoke at home with his parents and his sisters Astri, Alfhild, and Else. The children were raised in Norway's Lutheran state church, the Church of Norway, and were baptised at the Norwegian Church, Cardiff. His maternal grandmother Ellen Wallace was a granddaughter of the member of parliament Georg Wallace and a descendant of an early 18th century Scottish immigrant to Norway. Dahl's sister Astri died from appendicitis at age seven in 1920 when Dahl was three years old, and his father died of pneumonia at age 57 several weeks later. Dahl's mother decided to remain in Wales instead of returning to Norway to live with relatives, as her husband had wanted their children to be educated in English schools, which he considered the world's best. When he was six years old, Dahl met his idol Beatrix Potter, author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit featuring the mischievous Peter Rabbit, the first licensed fictional character. The meeting, which took place at Potter's home, Hill Top in the Lake District, north west England, was dramatised in the 2020 television film, Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse. 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, Gobstoppers were a favourite sweet among British schoolboys between the two World Wars, and Dahl referred to them in his fictional Everlasting Gobstopper which was featured in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 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 1967, he learned that she had saved every one of his letters; they were broadcast in abridged form as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week in 2016 to mark the centenary of his birth. According to Dahl's autobiography, Boy: Tales of Childhood, a friend named Michael was viciously caned by headmaster Geoffrey Fisher. Writing in that same book, Dahl reflected: "All through my school life I was appalled by the fact that masters and senior boys were allowed literally to wound other boys, and sometimes quite severely I couldn't get over it. I never have got over it." Fisher was later appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, and he crowned Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. However, according to Dahl's biographer Jeremy Treglown, the caning took place in May 1933, a year after Fisher had left Repton; the headmaster was in fact J. T. Christie, Fisher's successor as headmaster. Dahl said the incident caused him to "have doubts about religion and even about God". He viewed the brutality of the caning as being the result of the headmaster's enmity towards children, an attitude Dahl would later attribute to the Grand High Witch in his dark fantasy The Witches, with the novel's main antagonist exclaiming that "children are rrreee volting!". Dahl was never seen as a particularly talented writer in his school years, with one of his English teachers writing in his school report "I have never met anybody who so persistently writes words meaning the exact opposite of what is intended." He was exceptionally tall, reaching 6 feet (2 m) in adult life. Dahl played sports including cricket, football and golf, and was made captain of the squash team. As well as having a passion for literature, he developed an interest in photography and often carried a camera with him. Dahl dreamt of inventing a new chocolate bar that would win the praise of Mr Cadbury himself; this inspired him in writing his third children's book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and to refer to chocolate in other children's books. In July 1934, Dahl joined the Shell Petroleum Company. Following two years of training in the United Kingdom, he was assigned first to Mombasa, Kenya, then to Dar es Salaam in the British colony of Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania). Dahl explains in his autobiography Going Solo that only three young Englishmen ran the Shell company in the territory, of which he was the youngest and junior. Along with the only two other Shell employees in the entire territory, he lived in luxury in the Shell House outside Dar es Salaam, with a cook and personal servants. While out on assignments supplying oil to customers across Tanganyika, he encountered black mamba snakes and lions, among other wildlife.

For a brief period in the 1960s, Dahl wrote screenplays. Two, the James Bond film You Only Live Twice and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, were adaptations of novels by Ian Fleming. Dahl also began adapting his own novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was completed and rewritten by David Seltzer after Dahl failed to meet deadlines, and produced as the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971). Dahl later disowned the film, saying he was "disappointed" because "he thought it placed too much emphasis on Willy Wonka and not enough on Charlie". He was also "infuriated" by the deviations in the plot devised by David Seltzer in his draft of the screenplay. This resulted in his refusal for any more versions of the book to be made in his lifetime, as well as an adaptation for the sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. He wrote the script for a film that began filming but was abandoned, Death, Where is Thy Sting a ling ling?.

A major part of Dahl's literary influences stemmed from his childhood. In his younger days, he was an avid reader, especially awed by fantastic tales of heroism and triumph. He met his idol, Beatrix Potter, when he was six years old. Appearing on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in October 1979, Dahl named Thomas "the greatest poet of our time", and as one of his eight chosen records selected Thomas's reading of his poem "Fern Hill". Dahl liked ghost stories, and claimed that Trolls by Jonas Lie was one of the finest ghost stories ever written. While he was still a youngster, his mother, Sofie Dahl, related traditional Norwegian myths and legends from her native homeland to Dahl and his sisters. Dahl always maintained that his mother and her stories had a strong influence on his writing. In one interview, he mentioned: "She was a great teller of tales. Her memory was prodigious and nothing that ever happened to her in her life was forgotten." When Dahl started writing and publishing his famous books for children, he included a grandmother character in The Witches, and later said that she was based directly on his own mother as a tribute. One of the last dramatic network shows shot in New York City, the entire series is available for viewing at The Paley Center for Media in New York City and Los Angeles. He also wrote for the satirical BBC comedy programme That Was the Week That Was, which was hosted by David Frost. The British television series, Tales of the Unexpected, originally aired on ITV between 1979 and 1988. The series was released to tie in with Dahl's short story anthology of the same name, which had introduced readers to many motifs that were common in his writing. The series was an anthology of different tales, initially based on Dahl's short stories. The stories were sometimes sinister, sometimes wryly comedic and usually had a twist ending. Dahl introduced on camera all the episodes of the first two series, which bore the full title Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected.

Roald Dahl died on 23 November 1990, at the age of 74 of a rare cancer of the blood, myelodysplastic syndrome, in Oxford, and was buried in the cemetery at the Church of St Peter and St Paul, Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, England. According to his granddaughter, the family gave him a "sort of Viking funeral". He was buried with his snooker cues, some very good burgundy, chocolates, HB pencils and a power saw. Today, children continue to leave toys and flowers by his grave. In November 1996, the Roald Dahl Children's Gallery was opened at the Buckinghamshire County Museum in nearby Aylesbury. The main belt asteroid 6223 Dahl, discovered by Czech astronomer Antonín Mrkos, was named in his memory in 1996. In 2016, the city celebrated the centenary of Dahl's birth in Llandaff. Welsh Arts organisations, including National Theatre Wales, Wales Millennium Centre and Literature Wales, came together for a series of events, titled Roald Dahl 100, including a Cardiff wide City of the Unexpected, which marked his legacy. In June 2005, the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in the author's home village Great Missenden was officially opened by Cherie Blair, wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair, to celebrate the work of Roald Dahl and advance his work in literacy education. Over 50,000 visitors from abroad, mainly from Australia, Japan, the United States and Germany, travel to the village museum every year. In 2008, the UK charity Booktrust and Children's Laureate Michael Rosen inaugurated The Roald Dahl Funny Prize, an annual award to authors of humorous children's fiction. On 14 September 2009 (the day after what would have been Dahl's 93rd birthday) the first blue plaque in his honour was unveiled in Llandaff. The anniversary of Dahl's birthday on 13 September is celebrated as "Roald Dahl Day" in Africa, the United Kingdom and Latin America. In honour of Dahl, the Royal Gibraltar Post Office issued a set of four stamps in 2010 featuring Quentin Blake's original illustrations for four of the children's books written by Dahl during his long career; The BFG, The Twits, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Matilda. A set of six commemorative Royal Mail stamps was issued in 2012, featuring Blake's illustrations for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, The Twits, Matilda, Fantastic Mr Fox, and James and the Giant Peach. Actress Scarlett Johansson named Fantastic Mr Fox one of the five books that made a difference to her. blockquote|Dahl has an incredibly distinctive style: his subversive, unpredictable plots, musical prose and caustic wit are impossible to imitate. And yet his stories have proved astonishingly malleable. Often adapted by equally idiosyncratic writers and directors, when translated onto stage and screen, his works seamlessly take on the impression of their new maker. Like in many of his stories, Dahl offers a narrative where troublemaking is rewarded, and games and tricks are more successful than following rules. Perhaps this, more than anything, is the reason why Dahl's stories excite the imagination of so many adults and children, and why so many storytellers across stage and screen can't resist remaking his tales in their own individual style. Right across his body of work, playfulness and inventiveness are always prized over boring qualities like obedience and deference. In Dahl's world, creative disruption is presented in such an appealing, delicious light, that you can't help but join in the fun.|Anna Leskiewicz in The Telegraph, "Why we love the mischievous spirit of Roald Dahl". In 2000, Dahl topped the list of Britain's favourite authors. In 2003, four books by Dahl, led by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at number 35, ranked among the Top 100 in The Big Read, a survey of the British public by the BBC to determine the "nation's best loved novel" of all time. In surveys of British teachers, parents and students, Dahl is frequently ranked the best children's writer. He won the first three Australian BILBY Younger Readers Award; for Matilda, The BFG, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In a 2006 list for the Royal Society of Literature, Harry Potter creator J. K. Rowling named Charlie and the Chocolate Factory one of her top ten books every child should read. Critics have commented on the similarities between the Dursley family from Harry Potter and the nightmarish guardians seen in many of Dahl's books, such as Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker from James and the Giant Peach, Grandma from George's Marvellous Medicine, and the Wormwoods from Matilda. In 2012, Matilda was ranked number 30 among all time best children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a monthly with primarily US audience. The Top 100 included four books by Dahl, more than any other writer. The American magazine Time named three Dahl books in its list of the 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time, more than any other author. Dahl is one of the most borrowed authors in British libraries. In 2012, Dahl was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork—the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover—to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life he most admires. In 2016 Dahl's enduring popularity was proved by his ranking in Amazon's the top five best selling children's authors on the online store over the last year, looking at sales in print and on the Kindle store. In a 2017 UK poll of the greatest authors, songwriters, artists and photographers, Dahl was named the greatest storyteller of all time, ranking ahead of Dickens, Shakespeare, Rowling and Spielberg. In 2017, the airline Norwegian announced Dahl's image would appear on the tail fin one of their Boeing 737 800 aircraft. He is one of the company's six "British tail fin heroes", joining Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, England World Cup winner Bobby Moore, novelist Jane Austen, pioneering pilot Amy Johnson and aviation entrepreneur Freddie Laker. In September 2021, Netflix acquired the Roald Dahl Story Company in a deal worth more than £500 million ($686 million). A film adaptation of Matilda the Musical was released by Netflix and Sony Pictures Releasing in December 2022, and the cast includes Emma Thompson as Miss Trunchbull. The next Dahl adaptation for Netflix, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, was released in September 2023, with its director Wes Anderson announcing that he would also adapt three additional Dahl short stories for Netflix.

Dahl reviewed Australian author Tony Clifton's God Cried, a picture book about the siege of West Beirut by the Israeli army during the 1982 Lebanon War. The article appeared in the August 1983 issue of the Literary Review and was the subject of much media comment and criticism at the time. According to Dahl, until this point in time "a race of people", meaning Jews, had never "switched so rapidly from victims to barbarous murderers." The empathy of all after the Holocaust had turned "into hatred and revulsion." Dahl wrote that Clifton's book would make readers "violently anti Israeli", with Dahl stating: "I am not anti Semitic. I am anti Israel." He asked: "must Israel, like Germany, be brought to her knees before she learns how to behave in this world?" The United States, he said, was "so utterly dominated by the great Jewish financial institutions" that "they dare not defy" Israelis. In 1990, during an interview with The Independent, Dahl explained that his issue with Israel began when they invaded Lebanon in 1982:

they killed 22,000 civilians when they bombed Beirut. It was very much hushed up in the newspapers because they are primarily Jewish owned. I'm certainly anti Israeli and I've become antisemitic in as much as that you get a Jewish person in another country like England strongly supporting Zionism. I think they should see both sides. It's the same old thing: we all know about Jews and the rest of it. There aren't any non Jewish publishers anywhere, they control the media—jolly clever thing to do—that's why the president of the United States has to sell all this stuff to Israel. Responding in 1990 to a journalist from The Jewish Chronicle, whom he considered rude, he said: "I am an old hand at dealing with you buggers." Jeremy Treglown, in his 1994 biography, writes of Dahl's first novel Sometime Never (1948): "plentiful revelations about Nazi anti Semitism and the Holocaust did not discourage him from satirising 'a little pawnbroker in Hounsditch called Meatbein who, when the wailing started, would rush downstairs to the large safe in which he kept his money, open it and wriggle inside on to the lowest shelf where he lay like a hibernating hedgehog until the all clear had gone. In a short story entitled "Madame Rosette", the eponymous character is termed "a filthy old Syrian Jewess". In 2014, the Royal Mint decided not to produce a coin to commemorate the centenary of Dahl's birth, saying that it considered him to be "associated with antisemitism and not regarded as an author of the highest reputation". The statement says "The Dahl family and the Roald Dahl Story Company deeply apologise for the lasting and understandable hurt caused by some of Roald Dahl's statements. Those prejudiced remarks are incomprehensible to us and stand in marked contrast to the man we knew and to the values at the heart of Roald Dahl's stories, which have positively impacted young people for generations. We hope that, just as he did at his best, at his absolute worst, Roald Dahl can help remind us of the lasting impact of words." The apology was received with appreciation by some Jewish groups but not others. The Campaign Against Antisemitism, for example, said that: "For his family and estate to have waited thirty years to make an apology, apparently until lucrative deals were signed with Hollywood, is disappointing and sadly rather more comprehensible." In 1973, Dahl posted a reply, calling Cameron's accusations "insensitive" and "monstrous". The Horn Book published Cameron's response, where she clarified that she intended her article not to be a personal attack on Dahl, but rather to point out that, though the book is a work of fiction, it still influences reality. Herein, she again objected to the characterization of the Oompa Loompas, stating, "[T]he situation of the Oompa Loompas is real; it could not be more so, and it is anything but funny." The debate between the two authors sparked much discussion and a number of letters to the editor. A 1991 Washington Post article echoed Cameron's comments, with Michael Dirda writing, "the Oompa Loompas reveal virtually every stereotype about blacks". Dirda's article also discussed many of the other criticisms of Dahl's writing, including his alleged sexism, of which Dirda wrote, "The Witches verges on a general misogyny". In 2008, Una Mullally wrote an article for The Irish Times that described Dahl's short story collection Switch Bitch as "a collection better forgotten, laden with crude and often disturbing sexual fantasy writing". Nonetheless, Mullally argued that there are feminist messages in Dahl's work, even if they may be obscured: "The Witches offers up plenty of feminist complexities. The witches themselves are terrifying and vile things, and always women The book is often viewed as sexist, but that assessment ignores one of the heroines of the story, the child narrator's grandmother."

In 2023, Puffin Books, which holds the rights to all Dahl's children's books, ignited controversy after they hired sensitivity readers to go through the original text of Dahl's works, which led to hundreds of revisions to his books; The Telegraph published a list of many of these changes. The move was supported by a number of authors, most notably by Joanne Harris, chair of the Society of Authors, and Diego Jourdan Pereira at Writer's Digest, but drew many more critical responses. Several public figures, including Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, author Salman Rushdie, and Queen Camilla all spoke out against the changes. It was reported that when Dahl was alive, he had spoken out very strongly against any changes ever being made to any of his books. On 23 February 2023, Puffin announced it would release an unedited selection of Dahl's children's books as 'The Roald Dahl Classic Collection', stating "We've listened to the debate over the past week which has reaffirmed the extraordinary power of Roald Dahl's books" and "recognise the importance of keeping Dahl's classic texts in print."